


It Starts with a Flower and Other Once One Shots

by fiadorable



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Captain Swan - Freeform, Darth Charming / Evil Snow, Dimples Queen, Dragon Queen - Freeform, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hood-Mills Family, Missing Year (Once Upon a Time), One Shot Collection, Outlaw Believer, Outlaw Queen - Freeform, Regal Believer, Snow Queen brotp, Swan Believer, Swan Queen - Freeform, prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-09 08:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 23,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13477647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiadorable/pseuds/fiadorable
Summary: One shots that span many relationships and themes from Once Upon a Time. Choose yer poison.





	1. It Starts with Flower

**Author's Note:**

> Outlaw Queen
> 
> Prompt from melazon on tumblr. Robin leaves Regina a flower. Set in the Missing Year.

It begins with a flower.

A weed, to be more precise.

The child runs on unsteady legs, heedless of the roots and rabbit holes sprinkled in his path, a clutch of yellow sowthistles swinging from his hand. He’s panting by the time he reaches her, thin shoulders heaving, lifting his green cloak off the forest floor with every breath. He bends at the waist, more to catch his breath than in deference, she thinks, one hand planted on a knobby knee and the other thrusting the rustic bouquet toward her.

“Majesty,” he says. “For you.”

Regina glances at Snow, Charming, and the thief. The former two wear identical smirks, and the latter regards her with a wary curiosity as his son looks up at her through sweaty brown curls flopping onto his forehead. She glares at them all and then flicks her cape aside to crouch before the boy.

“What is your name?” she asks, pitching her voice low to keep their conversation semi-private.

The boy straightens, head held high, flowers still outstretched. “Roland of Locksley.” He announces his name with pride blooming from the tips of his toes to the ends of his ears, a wide gap-toothed smile completing his proclamation.

Henry’s face flickers over the boy’s, and she swallows thickly as a pain lances through her chest. “Well, Roland of Locksley, I thank you for your kind gift.” Sowthistle wreaks havoc on her sinuses, the one allergy she has, but she accepts his token with a grave expression and tucks them away in the folds of her cloak, _For safe keeping_ , she says.

Roland grins and pulls the edges of his cloak around him, looking for all the world like a dimpled green been, swaying side to side, overcome by a fit of bashfulness in her presence, and then he shrieks with laughter as strong hands lift him into the air.

“That was very thoughtful of you, m’boy,” the thief says, tossing his son into the air as Regina stands. “But we have work to do. We must show Snow White and her prince the way to Sherwood Forest.”

“What about the queen?”

Regina opens her mouth to answer the boy, but her eyes water and her nose buzzes as the thistle pollen hits her, and she chokes off her reply, raising her hand to press a finger delicately below her nose.

“Ah,” Robin says, glancing at Regina with a small frown. “The queen is going on ahead to make sure the castle is safe for everyone.”

“Oh,” Roland says. He wriggles in his father’s arms until the thief sets him down. He walks over to Snow and considers her with tilted head. “Are you really Princess Snow?”

Charming’s laugh makes an abrupt shift to a coughing fit as his wife elbows him, and the thief scolds his son for his impropriety.

“It’s all right,” Snow assures the thief, and nods her head at the small boy. “I am Snow White, and you were very brave when that flying monkey attacked us.”

Roland gives her a solemn nod before holding out his hand. “I’ll show you the way to our home.”

Snow raises her brows at Charming and Regina as the boy leads her away, chattering about the river that runs near their camp, the fat gray squirrel living in the large oak near his papa’s tent, and cautioning her against running across the Knotted Bridge lest she fall into to the bottomless ravine.

Charming chuckles and braces his hand on the pommel of his sword. “He’s precocious.”

“You’ve no idea,” the thief says, shaking his head. “Your Majesties.”

Regina watches the thief trail after Snow and his son, leaving her alone with Charming, her finger still pressed to her nose.

The prince steps closer and folds his arms across his chest. “You’re allergic to those flowers, aren’t you?” he asks, leaning toward her but keeping his face trained on his wife as she nods at something the boy says.

Regina lowers her hand. “Shut up,” she says, but frowns as the tingling builds again. She can’t hold it back any longer. She sneezes. Explosively. And then scowls as Charming digs in his overcoat and pulls out a handkerchief. She waves him off, conjuring her own in a flash of purple smoke.

“You’re sure you don’t need assistance inside the castle?”

“Just make sure you’re ready when I bring the shield down,” she snaps, turning away to march through the forest, and if half of her consonants sound like d’s when she speaks, the prince is wise enough to keep his silence.

——

It ends with a flower.

A rugosa rose tied to the shaft of an arrow buried between the stones framing her balcony.

She stalks over to the projectile and yanks it free, frowning as the mortar crumbles and falls to the floor. Not just a flower, she sees, but a scrap of parchment as well, wrapped around the stem and shaft, secured with a length of twine. Three words mark the paper, and she sits down hard on the bed as she reads.

Damn the Charmings for telling him, for who else would have remembered, and damn him for his incessant concern.

She crushes the paper into a ball and throws it aside, watches it skip across the floor until it collides with the hearth. She could burn it to ash, erase the evidence of his thoughtfulness, but she won’t. Conjuring flame seems too much effort to expend.

 _For your boy_.

She twirls the rose between her thumb and forefinger, touches the soft petals to her lips for a moment and allows herself a moment of grief amidst the pressures facing her today. A knock on the door echoes through the room. Snow and Charming come to discuss the niceties of casting the Dark Curse. She’s going to decimate an entire population again to save them from another form of destruction.

In the darkest crevices of her heart, in her loneliest moments, she wonders if Henry prefers his life with Emma, a life without magic and its dangers, its hidden costs. A life with a mother who creates instead of destroys. Will he even want her back in his life once they return to Storybrooke?

Another knock at the door, this time louder and accompanied by Snow’s voice. “Regina? You in there?”

She sighs, slides her finger under her lashes to catch the moisture collecting (she must be allergic to roses, too) and rises from the bed.

The rose she deposits in a small vase on her vanity, nestled within a cluster of dandelions that had been presented to her over breakfast this morning. She opens the door for Snow and Charming, and if they notice the gold-tipped arrow forgotten on her pillow, neither says a word.

Before they get down to business, Regina rubs her fingers across the petals of the rose once more, and whispers, _Happy birthday, my Little Prince_.


	2. A One Time Offer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary Margaret calls Regina for help with mayoral duties during 4a and Regina holds a baby. Set after Marian is frozen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snow Queen brotp + mention of Outlaw Queen

It's amorphous, this arrangement between Regina and Mary Margaret over the leadership of the town. While the dark curse is designed to place the caster in position as the mayor, all the finer details still have Regina's touch on them, down to the color scheme of the office and the arrangement of the furniture. Atrocious bird paintings notwithstanding. That's all Mary Margaret.

The lack of responsibility is… refreshing. Regina relishes the lightness of not being responsible for the lives of people ungrateful and uncaring of what it takes to be the one making the hard decisions, spends her mornings catching up on comics with Henry before school, her afternoons and evenings dedicated to researching cures for freezing spells.

However. When her former step-daughter calls her as she's pouring over a dusty tome for the third time that morning, and all Regina can hear is the incessant screaming of the newborn prince drowning out his mother, she finds herself unable to stay away.

She's satisfied with their arrangement (most days), but the click of her heels on the marble floors inserts a tiny spring into her step that's been absent, and walking into city hall feels more like coming home than walking into the mansion when Henry's away. Neal's wailing echoes through the empty hallways, and she winces as she rounds the corner and stops in front of the office. She's been here for all of thirty seconds her ears are already ringing. She tugs the sleeves of her black sweater down over her wrists, Mary Margaret having caught her in a rare moment of casual (for her) clothing, and opens the door.

Mary Margaret isn't behind the desk, as she'd expected, nor is she seated at the long conference table or curled up on the couch. Regina walks into the room, her lip curling as she catches sight of the bird print on the wall and then frowning as she sees the mirror she'd broken the last time she'd been alone in this room. She'd forgotten to replace it, but someone has at least swept up the glass. She hadn't noticed when pulling Marian's heart from her icy chest days ago, but that's neither here nor there right now, she tells herself, rubbing her palms along her black slacks.

Prince Neal is easy enough to locate. She walks over to the stroller where the young prince makes a concentrated effort to destroy his vocal cords long before ever uttering a word. His face is tearstained and red as one of her honey crisps, but he's no longer crying, just angry, his tiny body arching against the straps securing him to the stroller. "Mary Margaret?" she calls, undoing the clasps across the baby's chest.

"Regina?"

A hand appears from below the desk. Regina frowns and gathers Neal into her arms as Mary Margaret lifts herself from the cubby underneath the desk. "What are you doing here?" the younger woman asks, running the back of her hands across her cheeks.

"It sounded like someone was being murdered on the phone." Still does, in fact, but she's having no luck finding a cure for Marian, and solving a bureaucratic crisis sounds like heaven right now.

Regina bounces the prince in her arms and sways her hips as she walks back to the stroller to fish around for the pacifier clipped to the arm of the carrier. She holds the orange soother against his lips, but he knocks it out of her hand. The pacifier falls back into the stroller. Unperturbed, Regina reaches back down and this time throws a dash of magic toward the pacifier to chill the rubber. Again he rejects the offering. This time she catches the pacifier before it falls and tucks it into her pocket.

"He's been like this all day," Mary Margaret moans, sitting in the chair behind the desk, one elbow planted on the arm on the chair, chin propped on her hand. "David and Emma are busy on a lead and I have all this paperwork to do and I couldn't find the budget requests for the road improvements, which is why I called you, and no matter what I do he just keeps crying."

A string of body-jolting hiccups interrupt the baby's tirade, and Regina holds her breath, thinking the unexpectedness of this new sensation might distract him. Instead, it only incenses him more, and the crying resumes after the briefest of pauses. "Did you try feeding him?" she asks.

"Of course I did! I walked him, fed him, burped him, sang to him, changed his diaper twice, changed his clothes, changed my clothes, and nothing works. He hates me."

Regina rolls her eyes as the last sentence dissolves into a wail. Surely she hadn't been this pathetic when she'd first adopted Henry. To her surprise, though she finds herself saying, "Finish your paperwork."

"What?"

"I said finish your paperwork." She walks over to the file cabinet near the door and pulls a manilla envelope from the second tier of inboxes stacked on top. "Danielle files the budget requests in the second inbox. Completed forms go in the the third inbox." She tosses the envelope onto the desk with a thwap and shifts Neal to her other shoulder.

"But—"

"This is a one time offer, Mary Margaret."

"O-okay," she says, and pulls her chair closer to the desk. "Thank you."

Regina raises her eyebrows and turns back to the stroller. A soft white blanket with a blue ribbon woven through the edges is folded in the storage compartment, and she rubs her thumb across the cursive embroidery depicting his name. As she pulls the blanket free, a small cooler with tiny newborn bottles is revealed. She grabs both and shifts Neal again so she can pull the cooler's strap up over her arm. The blanket she wraps around him, tucking the extra length around his squirmy body, ensuring all his limbs are snug inside the fuzzy warmth. "We'll be down the hall," Regina says.

Mary Margaret nods, a weary smile on her lips as she pulls a small stack of papers toward her, pen in hand.

Regina closes the door behind her and walks down the hall, rubbing the baby's back and whispering in his ear. "We're going to on a tour of city hall. We're going to walk all up and down these hallways until you have screamed and cried yourself to sleep. Once you've calmed down a little, we're going to have a snack, and then you're going straight back to your mother and I'm going straight back to my vault."

The building isn't large by anyone's standards, but there are plenty of rooms and nooks and crannies to explore. They walk from room to room, Regina keeping a running narrative of the function of each room they're in, grateful it's a Saturday and no one else is working. Once they've visited all the offices, ducked into the women's restroom to check his diaper, and walked up and down the stairs twice, Neal's cries have subsided to a much lower decibel.

Henry would work himself into fits like this, and she'd taken him on this very tour many a time, trying to soothe the colicky tears away between meetings. As she remembers those long days and nights, the shadow of previous migraines triggered by the overwhelming helplessness and fatigue presses between her eyes. She's not that woman anymore, still trapped in the clutches of darkness, a single mother struggling to love as she felt she had never been loved, pacing up and down hallways at three in the morning, rocking a fussy infant to sleep with one hand as she tries to wolf down her lunch with the other. Now her boy is grown, almost, and the darkness still clings to her like a spider's web, delicate and sticky against her skin, but she's learning to work around what won't come free. No, she thinks as they round another corner, another hallway, she hadn't been any better than Mary Margaret.

There. Neal's cries begin to die off. He rubs his face against her shoulder, leaving a gummy trail of snot and saliva shimmering against the black cable knit pattern. If he'll take a bottle from her, she might be able to nudge him into the nap he's fighting so desperately against.

For a moment, she considers going back to the office. The couch will be more comfortable than standing or sitting in the stiff backed chairs that line the hallways, but if Mary Margaret has had any luck getting through the paperwork piled on the desk, she doesn't want to distract her. There are days she itches to take the title from her, to sweep in and reclaim her position and fix the mess things have become in her absence. But she won't. Because right now, she is just the Woman Formerly Known as the Evil Queen, and her only obligations are to be a mother, save her true love's wife, send the prince off to sleep. Easy.

She settles for sitting in the expansive chair behind the information desk. The arms are well padded and adjustable, and the seat is wide enough she could sit with her legs crossed beneath her if she wanted. As she considers the chair, she decides to do just that, and slips her boots off as she sets the cooler on the desk. Within moments she's crosslegged in the chair, Neal propped against her right arm, his bottle held up with three fingers from her left hand. The silence as he eats relieves most of the pressure in her head, though her ears continue to ring.

"You are lucky, little one," she says, quiet enough that Mary Margaret won't overhear through the the thin walls (though if she has any hearing left it would be a miracle). "You have a family who loves you."

Prince Neal is focused on the bottle, blue eyes almost cross-eyed, glassy in the haze of eating. Is it too soon for him to be able to focus on objects as far away as her face? It's been so long since she's held a baby this small. He even looks a little like Henry did at this age.

"Your mother and I have a complicated history, but I know she's doing what she feels is her best. You and me," she says, gently pulling the empty bottle away from his mouth, his tiny pink lips still smacking, trying to suckle the air, "We have a chance to start fresh with each other. You promise to give her hell every now and then, and I'll keep away the curses, the wicked witches, the things that go bump in the night, and the darkness that lurks in the daytime. Deal?"

She places the pacifier in his mouth and sighs when his eyes drop closed and stay that way. She brushes the last evidence of his tears away from his face with her thumb and stands up, careful to not jostle him too much. When she returns to the office, still sans boots, Mary Margaret has made it through the first two stacks of paperwork.

"You did it," she says, pushing herself up from the chair.

"Of course I did."

"How?"

Regina sighs. "I just did," she says.

"You make it seem so easy."

"That's because it is." Regina places the prince back in the stroller, taking care with his limp, sleep heavy limbs as she straps him in. "He's crying. You're his mother. It's your job to figure out why and do something about it besides calling me and hiding under your desk."

"I wasn't hiding. I dropped my pen," Mary Margaret protests, but when Regina raises her eyebrows at her she looks away. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Regina. I know you're busy."

Regina lifts a hand as if she can diffuse the apology like a foul odor in the air.

"No, I mean it. And I'm sorry I broke into your house during the blackout."

"I changed the locks."

"Oh, good. I like a challenge." They smile at each other for a moment before Mary Margaret sobers as she looks down at her son. "Regina, you're closest thing I have to a mother."

Regina cringes inside, but manages to keep her face neutral as she waits.

"You've done all this before and I haven't and I still don't know how you did it."

Regina shifts through several different responses before deciding what to say. "You have something I didn't have, though. You have David, Emma, even, to help you. Use them."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I can't lose him again, not after…"

"Zelena," Regina finishes. "And me." It no longer stings, the seemingly constant reminder of her misdeeds and their long-reaching consequences, has subsided to a slight ache beneath her sternum, the flare of pain in acknowledgement of sins that while one day may be forgiven will never be forgotten. "You're going to burn yourself out trying to be everyone at once. Have Emma watch Neal for a few hours. Or Belle. Or Granny. Anyone. Not me," Regina says, cutting off Mary Margaret's hopeful smile. "I have my own problems to deal with right now."

"Right. How's the research going?"

Regina purses her lips. "Not well. I should be getting back to it, as a matter of fact."

She turns to leave, but Mary Margaret tugs on her sleeve. "Thank you," she says. "For everything."

"You're welcome." They don't hug. She's not a huggy person aside from Henry and a certain other someone, but she clasps the younger woman's upper arm and squeezes, smiling. "You know, Ashley, the cinder girl, she has a first-time mothers group. I approved community grant funding for it before, well, before. You might want to try it out."

"Really?" Mary Margaret smiles, but it's short lived. "But I'm not a first-time mother. What would Emma think?"

"Emma's a big girl. She can handle it. And you could use the support."

"I'll think about it."

"Do. And I don't want another call from you tonight unless the Snow Queen is line dancing down mainstreet with more of those cursed ice cream cones. I'm not ripping the hearts of the entire town out for this psychopath's entertainment."

"You'll find something soon. I know it."

Regina gives her a tight smile, and spares one last glance at the prince, now snoring in his carrier as Mary Margaret returns to the chair behind the desk. She didn't get to solve a bureaucratic crisis, as she'd hoped, but getting out of her vault has at least done someone some good. And if she's honest with herself, she feels a little better, too. Even if she still has baby snot crusting into green cement on the shoulder of her sweater.


	3. Christmas Eve Rules

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One present, and one present only. That’s the rule on Christmas Eve, Henry explains to Roland as they sit on their knees in front of the small pile of gifts glistening under the tree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen + Hood-Mills Family + Regal Believer + Dimples Queen  
> Written for herardentwish for the OQ Secret Santa 2015

One present, and one present only. That’s the rule on Christmas Eve, Henry explains to Roland as they sit on their knees in front of the small pile of gifts glistening under the tree. Go for something small, he suggests, pointing out a few that might meet the criteria. Nothing too big that he won’t be able to play with until morning anyway.

Regina cradles a mug of hot chocolate between her palms, watching the boys dither over their selection with a soft smile, and leans into Robin’s side on the couch. His arm falls gently across her shoulders, fingers teasing the soft red flannel sheathing her upper arm. She squeezes his pajama-clad thigh after his fingers dip to her underarm to tickle, and she smiles against the lip of her mug as he muffles a yelp.

“Mom, are you and Robin gonna open one, too?” Henry asks, turning halfway toward her as he plucks an oblong shape from near the back of the tree. He hands the present over to Roland, who clutches the gift to his chest and scoots closer to the hearth to pick up his own mug of hot chocolate.

“Sure,” she says, patting Robin’s leg and moving her hand further toward his knee. “It’s tradition, after all.”

“I want to pick Regina’s!” Roland returns his mug to the hearth with a generous wobble that has Regina cringing and half lurching from the couch to steady his hand, but Robin’s arm curls tighter around her as he murmurs a soft, _He’s fine_ into her hair and presses a kiss to her temple.

A dribble of chocolate spills over Rudolph’s face as ceramic strikes brick with a sharp clink. The boy spies it, swipes a clumsy hand up the side and licks the chocolate sweetness off his palm as he walks toward the tree. Regina releases a quiet hiss under her breath, but relaxes back into Robin’s embrace, resting her head against his shoulder. She’ll just have to remember to have him wash his hands before they send him up to bed.

Henry continues picking through the presents, looking for one in particular that’s caught his eye. The one wrapped in slick purple wrapping paper, if she had to guess. He’d perked up the morning she propped in under the tree, a mischievous gleam in his eye as though he’d guessed its contents already. Regina lifts her mug to her lips against and takes a longer pull, a triumphant smile on her face as she swallows. Henry pulls that very box from near the base of the tree and sets it aside.

Roland clears a careful path to the tree and plunges both his hands into the evergreen, sending the glass ornaments nearby jittering and jangling. This time it’s Robin who warns him to be careful, thigh tensing below Regina’s hand as his son pulls a small package wrapped in newsprint from the boughs. He walks over to the couch, both hands clutching the small object. Before presenting the parcel to Regina, he glances to his father, who gives him an encouraging nod and a gentle smile.

Smelling something afoot, as Henry has scooted closer as well, she sits up straighter and sets her mug on the coffee table in front of her. “Is that for me?” she asks, leaning forward, elbows to knees until she’s eye level with Roland.

He nods twice. “Papa helped me make it for you.”

“Then I’m sure I’ll love it,” she says, tugging playfully on the hem of his pajama shirt. “Homemade presents are always extra special.”

Roland sways in place, tiny body twisting with indecision, sucking on his lower lip as he looks between her and his father. Behind him, Henry shuffles over on his knees, a candy cane striped box between his palms. He tosses the package to Robin, then sits next to Roland, knocking his shoulder to the younger boy’s elbow. “It’s okay,” he says. “She’ll love it.” 

This seems to be the vote of confidence he needs. Roland shoves the package into her hands, and now that his are empty, clutches them near his waist, fingers fluttering like tiny butterfly wings as she holds his offering.

It’s light and fits in her palms, a vague oval shaped lump wrapped in newspaper and scotch tape that crinkles in her fingers as she tries not to drop it on the floor. What could possibly have him in such a state? Regina smiles, fingers slipping below the loose flap of paper, but before she can lift away the covering, she stops.

Thick red marker covers the outside, careful, jagged lines of one still learning to write. The pigment has bled into the paper, but the words are still legible, and her chest hitches as she reads:

_To Mommy  
Love Roland_

Robin’s hand slides to her back, rubbing slow circles between her shoulder blades as she licks her lips, struggling to quell the fierce storm of emotion pressing behind her eyes. She lifts her gaze back to the five-year-old, a wide grin stretching across her face as she meets his eyes. “Roland?”

He smiles, bashful for a moment, before saying, “I thought… I asked Papa if I could, and then Henry said okay, and so I guess now I just need you to say if it’s alright or not if maybe I could…” Roland trails off, shifting from side to side. Henry curls an encouraging hand around his ankle, and the boy stills, waiting.

Regina looks to her son, and at his nod then turns to Robin, who also nods, a soft smile on his face. They’d never discussed this (when would they have had time?) but it’s not been anything she expected.

“Are you sure?” she asks Roland. Because above all else, she doesn’t want the image of Marian erased or replaced in his memory; the legend of his mother should burn bright through his father’s stories and his many uncle’s tales for as long he lives.

“Yes,” Roland says. “Henry has two mommies. Why can’t I?”

She releases a rush of breath, raising her arms, beckoning for a hug, and the little boy climbs into her lap, wrapping all four of his limbs around her as she plants silent tears in his hair. He hugs her like she is the dawning sun and the midnight moon, like squeezing her hard enough would spring light into darkness. He hugs her like Henry does. It’s one of her favorite things about him.

Robin slides the forgotten present from her hands, sharing a wink and a grin with Henry, the teen now stretched lazily on the floor with his bare feet propped near the fire.

The moment can’t last forever (how could it with an impatient kindergartener awaiting the verdict on his present?), but the tears at least have stopped when Roland pulls back, still sitting on her lap. “You didn’t even finish opening it,” he exclaims.

“It’s not fair. I’ve got two presents now.” Her voice cracks between the vowels, and she clears her throat once, twice before motioning for someone to hand over her drink.

“Well you’ve already half opened it, so you may as well finish it off,” Robin says, retrieving her mug and handing over her present. “I think we’ll allow it this once, right, men?”

“Totally,” Henry chimes, attempting to spin his present on one finger like a basketball.

“Then it’s settled. Milady, if you would do the honors?”

Regina rolls her eyes at the theatrics, but takes the package, if for no other reason than Roland may burst into a thousand wiggly pieces on her lap if she doesn’t open it right this second. She peels apart the last of the paper, oohing and ahhing over the chunky wooden necklace and bracelet that spill into her hands.

“Papa carved the beads, but I chose the shapes and put them on in the right order,” Roland announces, bristling with pride.

“It’s lovely,” Regina says, pulling him in for another hug. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Will you help me put it on?”

Roland scoots off her lap and crawls next to her on the couch as she turns and gathers her hair to one side. It takes him several attempts to work the clasp, but with some assistance from Henry, he manages to secure the necklace around her neck. The wooden beads click as she shifts it against her collar, allowing her hair to fall back into place. Robin helps her with the bracelet, fingers lightly brushing the underside of her wrist when he finishes, and a warm shiver settles in her belly as she catches her lover’s eye and sees the promise of more, later, when they’re alone, reflecting back at her.

“Now it’s our turn,” Roland says, sliding off the couch and hopping over Henry’s prone form. “Right?”

“Right,” Regina says.

She sits back and sips from her mug as the boys tear into their own gifts. Thank yous and wrapping paper fly across the room, a shortened preview of morning’s chaos and fun, and then each of them settles in to further inspect their gifts.

Roland ends up draped across both Regina and Robin’s laps after Henry helps set up the younger boy’s present, a lamp that projects stars onto the ceiling and walls to use as a nightlight. They dim the lights, wrapping the four of them in the homey warmth of the fire and the Christmas tree. And, of course, Roland’s stars.

The little boy plucks at her bracelet as he points out constellation after constellation, narrating origin stories combining both this world and the Enchanted Forest’s lore. Regina forgoes the last of her hot chocolate for running her fingers through Roland’s hair as Robin traces absent patterns across the curve of her shoulder, and Henry leans on the hearth, using the fire’s light to flip through the comic book writing manual she’d found for him. It’s nice to be here in this moment, cloaked in muffled darkness from the snow showers outside, her family surrounding her inside.

Soon, though, yawns begin puncturing Roland’s impromptu lecture. Despite his protests, Robin coaxes him off their laps and up the stairs, his present clutched to his chest with the cord dragging behind him like a tail, the plug bouncing along behind him. They’re not gone ten seconds when a loud, “I want _Mommy_ to tuck me in,” echoes through the atrium.

Regina’s heart shudders with joy. She ignores the wry smirk Henry throws her way as she slides off the couch, but can’t resist dropping a kiss to the crown of his head, allowing him to dodge out of the way when she tries for a half-hearted second on his cheek. He is thirteen after all. It aches in indescribable places that her baby boy is so grown, but there’s another little boy waiting for her now, impatient and grumpy and sulking on the stairs with his father.

She sweeps out of the living room and up the stairs, hands on hips, brows raised, a glint of mischievousness in her eyes as she finds two dimpled men sitting alike on a step, chins propped on hands, presents nestled between wide spread of their knees. “Is there a problem, gentlemen?”

“Indeed, your majesty,” Robin says, nodding gravely. “I stumbled upon a rogue little knight avoiding his bedtime, and he has requested a parley with the queen.”

“Very well.” Regina lifts her chin, looking down at Roland with a softened version of her imperious gaze. “Speak, sir knight.”

Roland squirms on the step, fighting to keep his face straight. He treats their imaginings with the utmost seriousness. “Majesty, I’d like my mommy to tuck me in tonight.”

“Then tell me who your mommy is, that I may send her to whisk you away to the land of dreams and allow Santa to visit this realm.”

“You!” he cries, unable to hold back his glee any longer.

“Me?”

“Yes!”

And who could say no to that, Regina wonders, her own facade cracking into unbridled delight, a whisper of a laugh slipping through as she motions for the Locksley men to precede her up the stairs. Robin hovers in the doorway as Regina does the honors tonight, pulling the covers up and over Roland’s head and then whipping them down to his armpits as he squeals in delight. A kiss to his forehead, a tap to his nose; there’s nothing different in his bedtime routine, but she smiles a tad brighter, lingers a smidgen longer brushing his curls away from his face. She’s always been something more. Now they have a name.

“Good night, my little knight,” she whispers, leaning down for one last kiss to his cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mommy.”

Robin steps into the room, switching places with Regina to say his own goodnights to the boy. She folds her arms across her stomach as she leans in the doorway, wiping away a surreptitious tear with a quick swipe of her fingertips, and smiles, again, gods, she’s never smiled so much in her entire life as she has in the last year.

After hugs and kisses and reiterations of promises of Santa visiting only so long as he stays abed and asleep, Robin disentangles himself and joins her in the hallway. “You alright?” he asks, pulling Roland’s door shut per his request. _All the way, Daddy! So I can see my stars._

“Never better.” She closes her eyes and allows herself a deep, cleansing breath. Robin’s hands grip her biceps lightly, sliding down to her elbows and tugging her into an embrace. He’s warm and soft and solid between her arms, down the length of her body, all the way to where she’s tucked her bare toes beneath his socked feet, wriggling to pull what body heat she can from him.

“What are the odds we can shuffle Henry off to his room to get some alone time under the tree before Santa arrives?” Robin murmurs, hands wandering from curve to curve along her sides.

The words rumble through his chest and into hers, and she hums to feel their echoes vibrate within her ribs. “Decent, if we send him with a few cookies.”

“I knew he was a reasonable lad. Shall we?”

Regina smiles against the soft fabric of his tshirt, one last, secret smile all for herself, and then pulls back with her smirk firmly in place. “Let’s do it,” she says, keeping one arm slung low across his hips as they make their way back to the living room.


	4. Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas at the Charmings’ doesn’t go quite as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen  
> Written for herardentwish for OQ Secret Santa 2015

Why the Charmings insist on hosting get-togethers at their tiny loft apartment when the entirety of their abode would fit five times over in the mansion continues to baffle her.

Baffle. Such a funny word.

Regina pushes the sleeves of her black sweater further up her forearms, bunching the soft cashmere around her elbows. It’s gods-cursed hot with the extended Charming-Swan-Mills family (and quite a few friends) mingling and celebrating in the small space. Creaky strains of holiday music fill every cranny, fitting between the cracks of conversations and curving around the scattered rumblings of laughter.

She leans her right elbow on the kitchen island’s bar and hooks her ankle around the rung on her chair, wondering if anyone would notice if she fiddled with the thermostat. The heat is making her brain fuzzy. She’s disinclined to ford a path through the crowd at the moment, but without a line of sight she dare not magick it from where she’s sitting. 

Regina sighs and raises her coffee mug for another sip of the sweet, red punch Snow’s been foisting on her all night. The sugary concoction has lost most of its carbonation, more sticky than tangy at this point, and she wrinkles her nose as the cloying sweetness zings the soft underbelly of her tongue.

That’s enough of that for tonight. 

Robin trundles down the stairs from the loft, landing with a small hop and a cheerful smile aimed her direction. He bobs and weaves through the crowd until he’s standing next to her, one hand on her shoulder as he reaches for his own abandoned coffee mug. After he finishes a long drag, he shudders, clinking his glass against hers.

“Not my preferred method of imbibing spirits,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “I think I’ll stick to whiskey.”

Regina laughs, a tinkling, light thing that surprises her. "You should try mine. It’s a little flat, but maybe it’s better with no booze.“

Robin smiles, chews his lower lip for a second as he leans into her space to loop his fingers through her mug’s handle.

An egregious number of scented candles are scattered through the room, more than enough to choke a Santa Claus-stuffed chimney, but Robin’s scent overpowers them all, filling her senses with the clean edge of soap rubbing against the spicy tang of evergreen and sweat. She licks her lips, shifting subtly in preparation to dart forward and peck a kiss to the side of his neck below his ear where his skin is warm and soft. He pulls back before she can make her move, darn him, and she sways on her seat, clasping her hand to his forearm to steady herself. What the hell was that?

“Regina, this is the same thing I’m drinking,” he says, mouth twisting as he lowers her mug.

“No,” she groans. “I specifically told Snow no alcohol. I’m supposed to light the town’s Christmas decorations on Main Street at midnight. With magic.” She waggles her fingers in the air, pleased and annoyed when he chuckles and draws her into a firm embrace, tucking himself between her knees. “I can’t do something on that scale while intoxicated.”

“How many glasses have you had, then? You don’t seem too bad off right now.”

“Enough.”

“Mm,” he muses, rubbing his hands in parallel streaks up and down her spine. “Perhaps try a bit of small magic, something innocuous, and then if you’re too far gone, Emma, perhaps, can take over for the night?”

She grumbles a little at the suggestion, this is _her_ thing to do tonight, but maybe if she stops now… There’s still an hour until midnight. She could be sober by then. Maybe. She pushes him away with two palms flat on his chest, a light flick of her wrists, and he steps back, sitting on another bar stool with an obliging smile on his lips.

A red candle flickers in a jar on the bar, something spicy and leafy, and Regina pulls it toward her, puffing the flame out with pursed lips. Once the fragrant smoke dissipates, she snaps, once, and a handkerchief droops from her fingers.

Well, shit.

“I’m guessing that wasn’t what you were aiming for, then?” Robin says, nudging her foot aside so he can brace his own on the rung of her stool.

Regina lifts her scowl from the handkerchief to the thief’s face. No, no it was not. She shakes the handkerchief to be rid of it, but instead of vanishing, the white cloth catches fire, and she drops it to the counter with a soft gasp. Robin has the wherewithal to grab it and toss it into the kitchen sink, twisting the tap on and dousing the flames.

He sighs, breath puffing out his cheeks. “Shall I find Emma?”

Regina lowers her head to her hand. “I’m going to murder Snow.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I don’t need magic to kill someone. I have two hands and an iron will.”

“Oh, yes, that’s true. I’d forgotten,” Robin says, and his tone jerks her head off her hand. He’s too serious to be serious.

Wait, what?

No. But—okay, she’s a little tipsy.

And he’s making fun of her.

“Do me a favor, love, and stand up,” he says, far too much humor crinkling his face.

She may not be able to light a candle, but she can stand. With as much of a put-upon air as she can muster, Regina slides off the barstool. The moment her feet touch the floor, though, she tips forward, face-planting smack in the middle of Robin’s chest. His arms wrap around her, steadying her as he chuckles and presses a kiss to her hair.

“Come on,” he says, helping her stand upright. “Let’s get you home.”

“I suppose I could wait to kill her,” Regina mutters, sliding her arm around Robin’s waist. “Wouldn’t want to smother her with lacy doilies by mistake. I can do better than that.”

“That’s the spirit, love.”

He guides her to the door, and they slip outside without much notice. Once on the landing, he sits her on the top stair, one hand curled around the stair banister for balance, while he goes back inside to confer with Emma, make arrangements to have her take Roland as well as Henry for the night. She has had quite a lot to drink, she thinks as the stairs blur and wobble below her shoes. Robin returns after moment that feels like an hour, and together they totter down the stairs, into the night air.

One foot in front of the other.

Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.

She hums aloud with that last one, and Robin laughs, squeezes her tighter, tucks her further into his side. She’s hot with the drink, she recognizes it now, and giddy and not caring that she is drunk in public and should be furious, but she’s so damn _happy_ to have his arm wrapped strong across her shoulders as she squeezes his hip.

He yelps a bit (that’s a ticklish spot of his if she presses her fingers into his flesh just so), and leans down to nibble at her ear, breath hot against her icy skin.

She tucks her bottom lip between her teeth and shoves him sideways as they reach Granny’s patio, propelling them both onto the property below the freshly strung Christmas lights.

“Hey, now, what’s this?” he asks, hands resting at her hips as she clasps her hands behind his neck.

“Dance with me,” she says, leaning forward to press a somewhat off-center kiss to his chilly lips. “I find myself very much in love with you right now,” she continues, swaying in his arms, on purpose this time, as he cocks his head to the side. “And I would like to share a dance with you.”

“Only right now? While you’re drunk, in the cold, and angry at Snow?” he asks, swaying with her until she sways a bit too hard and stumbles. Robin slides one hand to her lower back and the other skims the length of her arm to tug one of her hands free, cradling her palm against his chest.

“No,” Regina says. “There are other times, too. Right now is just especially good.”

“Oh, I see,” Robin says.

“You’re laughing at me.”

“I am not! I’m enchanted by you, Regina, as always,” he protests, pressing his forehead to hers, nuzzling her nose until she lifts her face, allowing him to kiss her good and proper.

He breaks the kiss too soon for her liking, already feeling the echoes of want and need elsewhere, but she can see the heat in his gaze behind the tender affection, and right now that’s enough. Dancing under the lights with him on a cold December’s eve is enough.

She wakes with her face full of pillow and her nightshirt half-swirled under her armpit, buttons gaping open to halfway down her chest. Regina rolls to her back, straightening her clothing, and squints for the clock perched on the nightstand.

“It’s three quarters past nine,” Robin says, his voice heavy and crackling with sleep.

She scoots onto her left hip to face him. “What happened last night?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember you convincing me to curb my homicidal urges toward Snow,” Regina offers, dragging her palm down the corner of her mouth to her neck, wiping away a clammy river of drool.

Robin chuckles, running a warm hand over her side until he lands at her hip. He tugs her closer, nosing his knee between hers, and flexes his fingers against her waist. “And after that?” he prompts.

“We walked home,” she says, biting her lip against a giggle as his fingers begin straying to the softness of her belly. “I shoved you, and then we danced.”

“Mmhmm,” Robin says. “You’re an adorable drunk. I must ask Snow what kind of liquor she put in that punch.”

“Tell that to my headache.” Regina inhales a sharp breath as he dips below the band of her pajama pants to tease at the curve of her derriere before pressing firm whorls along her spine where she’s always tight with stress.

“Is it very bad? I plied you with a fair bit of water once we made it home.”

That’s right. He did. She remembers tripping over the threshold into the foyer, laughing and hanging off his arm like a schoolgirl clutching her first crush, and then being shuffled into the kitchen for a rigorous water service. And then…

“Oh, god,” she breathes, palm landing flat on his bare chest. “I didn’t.”

“You did,” Robin says gravely.

“I fell asleep while we were—”

“Yes.”

“With my hand wrapped around your—”

“Indeed.”

“Oh my god.” Regina curls her fingers into a fist on his chest, chin dipping until her forehead bumps into his.

“Hey,” Robin says, pulling his hand away from her back to tip her face back up to his. “You’re fine, love. The fault is half mine. If I’d been thinking straight myself I would have simply tucked you into bed.” He kisses her once on the nose, then busses her lips with his own, a fleeting, chaste thing that does nothing to quell the tide of embarrassment.

“Now you know the other reason I don’t drink to intoxication while in public.”

“Oh?”

“I get handsy with no follow through.”

“Ah,” Robin says, sliding his hand along her jaw until his fingers tangle in her hair, trailing patterns from the base of her skull down her neck and back again. “Well, though stunted, I can assure you that you were a delight up until the point you fell unconscious.”

Regina sighs, shifting to give him better access to her scalp. As far as hangover headaches go, this one isn’t bad, but it makes the delicate ministrations of his fingers no less soothing. “Thank you for getting me out of there before I made a fool of myself.”

“Anytime, milady.” He scoots closer to her, fitting their fronts together. “Shall I fetch you some aspirin, love?” he murmurs into her hair. His lips brush her temple, then her cheek, darting over to sample the soft skin around her ear, his breath puffing a brief pulse of moist air behind the hinge of her jaw.

Her pulse quickens as he continues nosing and kissing his way down her neck, peeling away the already gaping neckline of her shirt. She wedges his thigh more securely between her own, and he groans into the crook of her neck as she rocks her hips against him.

“I was thinking we could try a more… homeopathic headache remedy first,” she says.

Robin lifts his head, a devilish gleam in his blue eyes as he kisses her deep into the pillow. “Promise you won’t drop off on me this time,” he cheeks once he releases her, thumb swiping over her kiss-swollen lips.

“Promise you can keep up,” she counters, her wicked grin faltering a hair when his fingers trail down her chest, unbuttoning her shirt as he goes, warm kisses christening each new expanse of revealed flesh. Her stomach quivers as he nips near her waistband, her hand fisting in his hair. She tugs lightly, brings him eye-to-eye with her, and plants a sound kiss to his lips, rocking a slow rhythm against him, enjoying the taste of his moans in her mouth.

“Now, I believe,” she says, squirming her hand below the elastic of his boxer briefs. “We were right… here.”

Robin wheezes, his jaw dropping as she strokes him. “Yes, I believe so, milady.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“Nothing,” he growls.

When they finish, when their bodies are loose-limbed and flushed, cooling in a tangle of sheets and half discarded pajamas, Robin presses his ear to her chest, and Regina kisses the crown of his head as it rises and falls with the slowing of her breath.

“Robin, who has the boys?”

“Emma, remember?” he mumbles, kissing the top of her breast. “We’re supposed to meet them at Granny’s at eleven to pick up Roland. Henry said he was going to stay the weekend?”

“Right. That’s right.” 

She smiles and trails her hand in lazy lines across his back as his thumb swirls idle circles across her nipple, too tenuous to pour heat back into her blood, but the caress sparks a gentle, satisfied hum below his ear all the same. 

Her headache has lessened, as she’d hoped, but like a primadonna waiting for her cue, Regina can feel it hovering in the wings, eager to resume center stage once the post-coital rush of endorphins dies down. She’ll pop a few aspirin before they leave to meet Emma and the boys. Later. These rare moments of quietness are a precious commodity, an opportunity to simply _be_ with one another, and they buoy her spirit more than any pill ever could.

This, right here, she thinks, is enough.


	5. Peppermint Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin discovers Regina likes peppermint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen

It’s not that they’ve avoided the mistletoe at the party, only that it seems superfluous when they keep dragging each other into darkened corners for kisses spiced with holiday drinks and warm, if brief, caresses (not counting his somewhat lengthy foray down the slender line of her neck that tugged loose a delicious, berry-tinged sigh).

Night stretches lazily toward the stroke of midnight. Robin sips the latest alcoholic concoction foisted upon him by the cheerful blonde behind the bar. Chocolate and peppermint tangle on his tongue, menthol soothing where the cinnamon from his last drink inflamed. Despite the cooling effect coating his lips, the insides of his cheeks, the mixed spirits fuel the fire in his belly, compounding the warm flush crawling up his neck. He’s turning off of a good-natured ribbing from his men, and Regina’s ricocheting away from a boozy verbal sparring fest with Emma, when they find themselves entwined below the festive sprig in full view of the room.

“Kiss! Kiss!” the cry goes out, and though they’re not shy about public displays of affection, they’re not accustomed to performing for the benefit of an audience. There’s a difference, see.

He leans back against the doorframe, ignoring Little John’s boisterous encouragement in favor of studying his love in front of him. Red, green, and blue lights shimmer across Regina’s flushed, smiling cheeks, and he’s deep enough in his cups that he clasps his hands behind him to stay the impulse to scoop her up and carry her into an empty room to snog her senseless. She shrugs, glancing up at the mistletoe and then back to him, tucking her hair behind her ear, and that’s that it would seem.

He chugs the last of his drink and tosses the plastic cup to Tuck, not bother to check if the man’s caught it or not. He slouches, widens his stance as Regina steps into him and slips her knee between his own, and his palms curve around her hips as hers rest on his shoulders. He’ll plant a heated, quick kiss on her lovely red mouth, and then turn to land one on John, hovering behind them, egging them on even now.

Of course, plans never do work out between the two of them.

Her lips brush his, light and feathery, a sweet, tender kiss that he wasn’t expecting. She tastes of cranberries and mulled wine, smells of vanilla and the softness of home, and gods above he could die happy in this moment, enveloped in her warmth. He sinks into her, fingers flexing on her hips as her tongue swipes across his bottom lip. She stutters then, a quiet inhalation hidden in the muted space between their bodies, and she latches onto him, hands slipping from his shoulders to cup his jaw.

“You’ve been drinking peppermint schnapps,” she whispers into his mouth, a wicked curve gracing her own as she closes her teeth around his lower lip, sucking gently before releasing him to change their angle. He tightens his hold on her, swallowing a groan and pulling her hips deeper into his as his fingers twine through the silky strands of her hair.

A crumpled napkin bounces off the side of his neck, and their mouths slide reluctantly apart as the party goers start jeering for them to get a room in jest. “Seems we’ve put on too good a show,” he murmurs, squeezing her side lightly as she smirks and leans back in his embrace. He straightens, then bends into a slight bow, clasping Regina by the wrist and leading her around the corner into the back hall of the diner as the party resumes without them.

Once they’re out of sight, he walks her backward with light pressure on the front of her hips, landing her against some poor sap’s doorway with a bump and a giggle as he lowers his mouth to hers once more. She smiles into the kiss, fingernails tracing gentle swirls on the back of his neck, and as she claims his lips once more, he resolves to secure his own private stash of this “peppermint schnapps” before the night is gone.


	6. No One Needs to Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Dark Swan Arc AU dialogue prompt: No one needs to know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Swan Queen
> 
> *****  
> Trigger warning :: panic attack  
> *****

Neither of them is a snuggler. At least not while they sleep.

In quiet moments, when the bedroom is lit only with the lamp on the nightstand and Regina props velo bound proposals or reports on her knees, Emma loops her arm through hers, skims her fingers up the inside of Regina’s forearm until the brunette shivers and releases her grip on the edge of the papers, entwining their hands as Emma leans her head on her shoulder and reads the jargon aloud in ridiculous voices for as long as Regina’s patience lasts (sometimes longer, and on those nights the distance is thick between their ragged tempers), and then the lamp clicks off (or not) as hands wander, paper crumples, and sheets twist around them as teeth graze against pulse points, lips whisper over skin that quivers under delicate ministrations, and Emma whispers, “Fuck,” into the side of Regina’s pillow as the erstwhile queen smirks between her legs. After, while the blood still hums in their veins and the flush fades from their skin like a setting sun, leaving the hollows of their bodies dewy with sweat, goose flesh rising in the chill of the air, they pull close together, tethered as they drift to sleep.

For a time.

One of them shifts, rolls away (Regina, it’s almost always her dreams tugging at her seams, even in sleep, though since Emma’s return from the dagger’s grip it’s become a toss up as to who leaves whom), leaving the other to follow or not, to gather the remaining sheets and settle on the other edge of the bed or wind herself tighter around a torso that will continue to fight and fidget until the dreams have passed, and there are nights when her arms are all that’s needed to stay the darkness kept locked away by the conscious mind, but just as many where solitude and the few inches of bare mattress between them is enough to let the moment fade. They’ll come back to each other in the morning, tug of hips, kiss of lips, brush of gentle fingertips, a slow dance of awakening on days they’re not running late or on opposite schedules.

The point is, when Regina wakes with her heart thump thump thumping in the dip of her collarbone, every rattling breath she draws stinging with stifled screams, and Emma isn’t wrapped around her like a baby sloth, she doesn’t worry. Not until she swings her feet over the side of the bed and glances over to the other side of the bed and sees the covers scrunched and mussed and absent of one sleeping savior. She frowns, but stands and pads to the bathroom for a glass of water. Sometimes Emma will get restless in the middle of the night, will leave their bed to go for a two a.m. run or fix grilled cheese sandwiches dripping with tomatoes, peppers, and freshly plucked herbs from the window garden, and then once her demons are exercised and fed, she creeps back to their bed with Regina none the wiser. 

Unless she’s woken as well. Like tonight.

Her hand slides up the wall, tripping the light switch with thirty years of muscle memory, eyes already closed against the glare of the sixty-watt bulbs lining the top edge of the mirror, groping for the avocado green plastic cup she keeps sink-side for occasions such as these.

“Off.”

Regina jerks her hand away from the cup, sends it clattering into the sink as she turns, her body sluggish as her mind sharpens at the unexpected voice. Emma, folded into the space between the clawfoot tub and the glass shower, fingers fisted in her hair at the sides of her head, her eyes rimmed in red and touched with the wild edge the blonde falls under on her bad nights.

“Please, turn it off,” Emma says, her voice hoarse, gaze fixed around Regina’s bare knees below her periwinkle silk nightgown.

She complies immediately, stands still as her eyes readjust to the darkness again, until she can see the outline of her lover in the ambient light from the window, and then sinks to the floor in front of her, close enough to touch, far enough away to give her space. Like always. “Breathe,” Regina says, slowing her own respiration, inducing a mild fit of lightheadedness that she ignores as she rests her hands on her knees, palms down.

“I know,” Emma snaps, but her breathing begins to even out, slow at first, and then more steady, until Regina feels comfortable releasing her own breath into autonomy.

Four months. That’s how long it’s been since Emma’s last panic attack, a silent, unacknowledged passage of time neither is willing to verbalise.

“What do you need?” Sometimes space, sometimes to be held, sometimes idle chatter as though they’re sitting in the kitchen drinking wine long after Henry’s gone to bed. Once she’d asked for her phone and a set of headphones, and that time she’d come out of the attack less shaky after playing recording after recording of a song, she wouldn’t say which, over and over again. It’s never the same, though, so Regina always asks, waits for Emma to cue her action.

Tonight, her request is simple. “Stay with me.”

“Always,” Regina says, and she stretches her legs out and to the side so she’s not invading Emma’s space but won’t cramp sitting on the cold tile with her back pressed to the vanity cabinets.

She’s screaming inside, hands almost trembling with the desire to reach out and do… something. Anything. But she restrains herself. It’s selfish, she knows, to think of herself at a time like this, but seeing Emma mid-attack throws her back to an inky smear of time when she was the one shaking on the floor of a differently tiled room with no one who knew or cared what became of her once the crippling something released her, exhausted, chewed up and spat out like the worthless person she is. (Was). The attacks don’t come for her as often now, have ceased almost entirely since she’s come to Storybrooke, but Emma’s pain, Emma’s struggle, Emma’s uneven gasping and taloned fingers call to the echo of those memories lurking inside her. So she uses the time to center herself, the way she does when channeling magic, to focus on what Emma needs rather than her own need to fix, to heal, to protect, tells herself this is all that’s required of her.

Shards of time expand and contract in the dark, and gradually, Emma unfolds herself, her fingers unclenching, her feet skipping across the floor in tiny increments until her soles rest against Regina’s thigh, her toes flexing, pressing lightly into her leg. Regina moves her hand across her lap until her fingers brush the outer edge of her foot. When she gets no reaction, she shifts so her hand rests on a bare ankle, and they stay there for a while, breathing in the night, fingers circling and tracing the delicate bones of her feet until Emma announces she’s ready for a glass of water and another attempt at sleep.

“Don’t tell Henry,” Emma says, pulling her legs under the covers, sliding down to the pillow and rolling to her side.

“I won’t,” Regina promises, mimicking her pose. She sweeps her thumb across her cheekbone, presses a kiss to her forehead as Emma snakes her arms around her waist, tangles their legs, draws her close until they’re breathing each other in like they’re each other’s oxygen. “No one needs to know.”


	7. Tell Me a Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue prompt: Tell me a secret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dragon Queen

“Tell me a secret,” the young queen drawls as she traces runes on Maleficent’s bare shoulder with her middle finger, her breath like a puff of steam against her neck. “Something no one else knows.”

The dragon seizes the queen’s hand, lifts her wrist to her mouth and slides a delicate kiss over the thin blue veins flowing beneath the veil of her skin. Her tongue darts out to taste her pulse, fast and strong even still, and she swallows a thick groan as the younger woman shivers, her body quivering against her own beneath the gossamer sheets.

“I would keep you for my own,” Maleficent growls, earning an exasperated huff as the younger woman jerks her hand away.

“I won’t be claimed by anyone or anything.”

“As you wish,” the dragon allows, stretching mightily and rising from the bed, leaving her robe draped on the chaise.

The queen watches, back pressed against the ornate gold headboard, clutching her wrist, her dark eyes burning, always burning with the fire the dragon finds so intoxicating.

“Being hoarded by a dragon has its… pleasures, as you know,” she continues as she basks in the warmth of the fireplace, turning her head to cock an eyebrow at her from over her shoulder. “But I understand your reluctance.”

Despite her ire, the queen’s eyes follow the orange light flickering across her curves, retracing with her eyes what her mouth has already tasted. The young woman can’t conceal her hunger, even behind the sharp curl of her lip and jut of her chin. Such longing for companionship, for acceptance, for a gentle touch, a lingering glance fueled by passion instead of apathy or sycophantic adoration; the acrid taste of it lingers on Maleficent’s tongue as she licks her lips and turns back to the fire.

Their trysts will not last much longer, the dragon thinks, sweeping her fingertips along the mantle. The queen holds no secrets from her. Perhaps she is the only one who cares to look, but one day the king will wake from his pathetic, self-imposed daze and realize there are others sampling the queen’s delights, others who see the not the shadow of a dead woman, but a fiery sun casting a pall on those who dare meet her gaze. On that day, Maleficent plans to be far away from whatever unholy hell Regina unleashes upon the kingdom to the west. The fall of a mere king does not interest her, but the dragon, oh, the dragon recognizes the darkness festering in the young woman’s heart; it will be the queen’s undoing as surely as it is her own.

“When you wake the flames will take your soul to the hunting grounds,” she sings to herself, turning back to the little queen.

Yes, their time together like this is short, she thinks again as the queen’s eyes sharpen to flint, but that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy the time they have left. The dragon slinks back to the bed, swooping upon its single occupant with a searing kiss, burning away what darkness she can flake from her lips, knowing it won’t be enough, will never be enough. The queen’s body rises at her silent command, and if she mistakes the dragon’s sigh for passion rather than the overture of a goodbye, she can grant the young woman one less heartache. If only for the moment.


	8. I Got You a Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue prompt: I got you a present. A season five conversation between Henry and Robin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Believer + Outlaw Queen

Henry lopes down the stairs, swinging himself forward using the banister. They’re fighting again. Mom and Robin. To their credit, they’ve gotten better about hiding it from him and Roland, but he can tell when the bowstring of his mother’s temper pulls taut. She’s taken to locking herself in her study after their quarrels to cool off. Before, she’d retire to the vault, but a few weeks ago Emma ambushed her there in the middle of the night, wanting to pick a fight. Morning broke with one of his mothers concussed on the beach and the other streaking a highway of fire into the woods.

(She doesn’t go out at night unless she has to now, and no one’s seen Emma since, but he doesn’t think about that now).

He stops in front of the study door, rapping a gentle rhythm with his knuckles.

Are you ok?

The code was his idea. A way to check on his mom and still give her space. She’s even used it a few times with him, when he’s come storming into the house after school and locked himself in his bedroom, leaving Roland behind in the foyer to explain to Robin or his mom or whoever was home to meet them that day, that Henry was having “a moment”. That’s what Emma started calling them, before…

I’m fine.

Really? he responds.

“Yes, little prince,” she says, her voice scratchy and muffled behind the door. “Don’t stay up too much longer. We have breakfast with your grandparents tomorrow morning.”

“I won’t,” he says, and leaves her to her solitude.

He’d forgotten about breakfast. Two hours sitting around a table with David and Mary Margaret, pretending everything is fine, that there isn’t this gaping hole in their family, until his grandma can’t help herself and drags his mom over to the corner to ask if she has any news. He’s tired just thinking about it, but he can’t get out of it, not now, so he may as well go forward with his plan tonight.

Henry flips the garage light on and shuffles to the back corner. Now may not be the best time to talk to Robin, while they’re in the middle of a fight, but the box he ordered finally arrived yesterday, (late, of course, thanks, UPS), and he found Roland poking around his hiding place earlier today. It’s a good spot, tucked behind a slew of bicycles, camping gear, and one yet unassembled pergola for the backyard intended for Emma’s birthday (but that hadn’t happened, and the beat-up box with the soft, ragged corners twists his lungs a bit until he pushes past it). He drags out a smaller box with crisp corners and his name printed in block type on the shipping label. He’d ordered it online and had it delivered to the next town over, just in case, and Ruby was nice enough to fetch it for him this morning. The line jacks up mail from outside at times.

He curls his arm around the box, heading to the backyard where he’d spotted Robin brooding, and pushes the back door closed with his foot. Robin sits in the middle of the bench, below the widespread branches of the apple tree, elbow to knee, turning something small over and over in his hands. Henry’s breath catches as the object glints in the light from the house. It’s definitely something gold, but before he can discern if it is what he thinks, the older man looks up and stuffs the mysterious object into his pocket.

“Henry,” he says, scooting over to make room for him to sit. “What’s all this?”

“I got you a present.” Henry drops the box in front of him and then flops onto the bench.

“What’s the occasion?”

Henry shrugs. “It’s pretty self-explanatory once you open it,” he says, shoving the box closer to the outlaw with his foot.

Robin tilts his head, raising his eyebrows, but pulls his pocketknife from his boot and begins slicing through the packing tape. Henry sits forward, bouncing his knees as Robin lifts a large black bag from the box. Maybe this was a bad idea. Bad timing, at least, but he’s starting to realize there are no perfect moments, only gaps where the world settles long enough to let you take stock of where you are in relation to where you’ve been.

“What is it?” Robin asks, his voice bright with curiosity.

Henry takes a deep breath and folds his hands between his knees. “It’s a tactical diaper bag. For, you know. Next month.”

Robin freezes for a moment, only a moment, and then resumes his exploration of the bag, ripping Velcro patches, unzipping zippers, and batting the sides open to poke around inside. “Expecting the baby to go into battle?” he asks lightly.

“In this town? Maybe.” Henry sits back, rubs his palms on his jeans. “I asked Grandpa what he would have wanted when Neal was born, and a non-flowery, non-frilly diaper bag was near the top. Well, that and diapers. I think you can understand why I went with this option.”

“Rumor mill still going strong about you and the portal jumper’s daughter, then?”

“You go on one date at Granny’s, with your parent, no less, and suddenly the student body loses its mind.”

Robin chuckles and sets the diaper bag on the bench between them. “I’m sure things will ease up soon enough.”

“I hope so,” Henry says. “She can’t even look at me without blushing, let alone talk to me.”

“Give her some time, a little space.”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you for this,” Robin says, patting the bag. “I know the last few months have been hard on everyone.”

Henry shrugs. The last few years have been hard on everyone, he wants to say, but he knows what Robin means. Leaving town. Zelena. The baby. Emma. His throat tightens at that last thought, and he shifts a little on the bench, swallows a few times to loosen his body and his mind.

(He does not wonder what his other mother is doing right now).

“I hope Regina and I didn’t disturb you with our disagreement earlier.”

“No, you didn’t,” Henry says, snapping out of his melancholy bubble. “I mean, I knew you guys were arguing, but it’s kind of hard not to know when Mom’s upset. She’s not loud about it, but…”

“The air starts to taste different.”

“Yeah.”

They shift into silence, Robin fingering the bag’s strap and Henry scuffing the ground with the toe of his shoe as a question burns inside him, like a cinnamon candy stuck in the back of his throat. “What were you holding?” he finally asks, sitting up straighter. “Earlier, when I first came out here.” Henry holds his breath as Robin reaches into his pocket.

(Please don’t be a ring, please don't—)

“Souvenir of sorts from the missing year in the Enchanted Forest,” Robin says, handing him a small, golden arrowhead. The tip has been blunted, the shaft sheared and smoothed over. “Your mother gave me a quiver of gold-tipped arrows as a thank you when she first arrived.”

Henry wilts into the back of the bench, tension uncoiling within him in quiet skips, like a row of snaps popping open. He runs his fingers over the trinket. “You expect me to believe Mom gave you a present? Right after she first met you,” he scoffs, tossing the arrowhead in the air a few times.

“What can I say; I’m a helpful sort.”

“Must have been some favor.”

“It was. He kept a secret for me,” his mother says, her hand touching his shoulder as she steps around the bench. “From your grandparents.”

He hadn’t even heard her come outside, and he shoves his hands in his pockets as she observes the gift on the bench between him and Robin with a slight dip of her chin.

“What kind of secret?” he can’t help but ask.

She raises her brows and purses her lips at Robin, some kind of question, a challenge maybe, drifting into the air between them. Henry swings his head back to the man sitting on the bench.

“The Queen requested my silence,” Robin says, eyes fixed on his mother as if the rest of the world has gone fuzzy around her. “I am honor bound to remain so until the breath flees my body and my bones turn to ash, til my blood cools in my veins and my heart beats its last.”

Oh, brother. Henry bites back the urge to roll his eyes. They get like this sometimes. People talked a little different in the Enchanted Forest, he’s learned, and while most everyone’s speech patterns have relaxed into this world’s, those brought over for the first time with the second curse slip into it at times. Like Robin. And his mom eats it up, gets this look on her face where she’s trying to play aloof or angry or annoyed, but the crease between her brows isn’t there and the corners of her mouth struggle to reign in the smile threatening to burst across her face.

“Okay,” he says, dragging the last syllable out to break the spell. “We have a saying here: never kiss and tell. That’s all you had to say.”

“He just did,” his mother says, and she ruffles his hair like he’s Roland’s age again, pretends to pout when he ducks out of the way and smooths his hand across his head. “It’s past time for you to be in bed, young man.”

“I’m going, I’m going.” He stands and gives her a proper hug, not too long of one though (because they are outside and someone might see), and then waves goodnight to Robin. The older man nods his thanks for the gift again, and then Henry retreats to the house.

Once he’s in his room, he slides his fingers under the window pane, lifts it as quietly as he can, and settles on his knees, chin propped on his folded arms on the sill. The apple tree blocks most of his view, but he can tell his mom’s assumed his vacated position on the bench. They’re talking, voices a low hum under the symphony of insects cavorting in the night, and he slows his breathing to try to pick up whatever scraps he can. No one tells him anything.

His efforts are for naught, though, their words exchanged from mere inches apart with no wind to carry the delicate enunciations to his ears. He sighs, stands and sweeps his gaze around his bedroom. Discarded clothes, books, and a crumpled collection of last term’s papers waiting for the waste bin clutter the floor. Fast approaching the point where his mom will refuse to step across the threshold to say goodnight or check his homework until he’s tidied and dusted and made things just so. This weekend he’ll do it, he thinks, scooping his pajamas from a puddle at the foot of his bed and pulling them on. He takes a moment to duck into the bathroom to swipe his toothbrush across his teeth (spit, rinse, rub the pad of his thumb across the bristles under the stream of water) before resuming his post at the window.

The cicadas drown out everything but their summer song, and he’s about to give it up as a lost cause until he hears a tiny noise that definitely did not come from a six-legged creature. Henry squints, then relaxes his eyes, trying to see between the branches of the apple tree and the fiberglass grating of the window screen, and yes, yes they are doing exactly what he thinks they’re doing. His mom is practically sitting in Robin’s lap from what he can see, which he’ll admit is not a lot, but there’s more movement down there than a simple make up kiss requires.

“Get a room!” he calls out, loud enough to break through the haze of hormones but not so loud to wake Roland in the next room if he’s left his window open. A shock of adrenaline crests in his abdomen at his boldness, his sass perhaps crossing the thinning line between being respectful and showing the world, and his mother, he can keep up with the quips and the jokes and throw a little shade of his own.

He was raised by the former evil queen, after all. 

“Go to bed!” she says.

He shakes his head as he stands, and pushes down on the window until it clacks shut. The comment might get him in trouble later, but as long as they’ve sorted out whatever spat they’ve had, he’ll take a day or two without his comics or video games. He pulls his quilt over his shoulders, turning the arrowhead he forgot to return to Robin over and over in his hand. Later, he wakes when the two of them creep up the stairs, blinks at the digital clock on his nightstand glaring the single digit time as something dangerously close to a giggle slips from his mother’s lips before her bedroom door closes with a soft click. He rubs his face against his pillow and settles in for a few more hours of sleep. Seems they’re all going to be a little late for breakfast with his grandparents, and that suits him fine.


	9. Going to Extremes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue prompt: You fainted… Straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.
> 
> Set during the Missing Year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen

Half of her body is cold and the other is warm, but it’s the smoke blowing into her face, irritating her nasal passages that snaps her back into consciousness with a heaving gasp, her hands curling reflexively over her abdomen.

“No, no, lie still milady,” a man’s voice says.

For fuck’s sake, it’s the thief who’s found her.

His hand on her shoulder keeps her from rising, but the searing agony slicing through her gut keeps her grounded more so than his intervention. 

“You’re injured,” he continues, holding the back of his hand to her forehead as though she’s a sick child.

“You don’t say.” She shifts, tenses her limbs one by one, conducting her own inventory of the damage. The wounds to her torso seem to be the worst of her maladies, her pounding headache a close second.

Small price to pay for her life.

While she’d been unconscious, the thief had smeared some kind of poultice over the slashes she’d suffered at the hands of a monkey who got too close. She probes the thick strips of cloth winding around her waist, and her fingers come away tacky with drying blood and the medicinal goo. Something soft supports her head, a musky blend of sweat, forest, and the harsh lye they’ve been using to scrub their clothes filling her senses under the acrid smoke. His cloak.

And that’s when she knows she’s going to be all right because she has the energy to flare her nostrils at his gallantry and jerk her upper body away from his steadying hands, though the motion costs her a sharp flare of pain as her wounds tug against her skin.

The thief removes his hands from her, sits back on his heels with his arms raised in surrender. “I’d tell you a simple thanks would suffice, but we both know how that conversation will end.”

“Where are we?” she asks, craning her head to try to place their position in the forest. “I don’t recognize this hollow.”

“Sherwood. One of the many hideaways my merry men and I use to escape villainous black knights or rabid flying simians.”

“Charming.”

“Locksley,” he counters, handing her his canteen. “We should have your head checked if you can’t remember who I am. Here, drink. You’re dehydrated after all that blood loss.” He slides his hand beneath her neck, but she bats him away, replacing his hand with her own.

“Don’t be dense,” she says, lifting her head to sip from the bottle, and then she’s gulping down the cool water, her newly awakened thirst raging in her throat, until only a quarter of the liquid remains. “How did you find me?”

“I took the most convoluted, dangerous path through the woods, found your blood trail, a few charred monkey corpses, and there you were, stumbling through the brush like a wounded, angry bear.”

She frowns. “I don’t remember that.” She hands back the canteen, wipes the back of her hand across her mouth and then across her forehead, sighing when the breeze chills the water on her flushed skin.

“Probably because you fainted,” he says, poking the fire with a long stick. “Straight into my arms when I walked up to you.”

“I did not,” Regina says, but, oh, she does remember someone calling her name, a faint eddy of a memory swimming to the top of her hazy recollection of what happened after her disastrous encounter with the flying monkey ambush on her forest patrol. “I did not faint like some damsel in distress,” she insists.

“Ah, but faint you did, milady, though not before giving me a thorough tongue lashing.”

“Oh, god.”

The thief looks over his shoulder, smiles that infuriating, cheeky grin he likes to flash at her when he winds her up. “You know, if you wanted my attention, you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

“You think too highly of yourself, thief” she snaps, shifting to dislodge a rock from the small of her back, wincing as her wounds pull again. “One day, your self righteous arrogance is going to land you in a situation you can’t charm your way out of, and I’m going to enjoy every humiliating minute of it.”

“Perhaps,” he concedes, abandoning the fire and settling down against the tree closest to her prone form. “But today is not that day. Today, I saved your life, and I’m allowed a bit of fun at your expense, your majesty, seeing as you called me a thrice-cursed, cockleburred idiot for being out in the woods on my own before you passed out due to injuries sustained while doing the exact same thing.”

“I have magic. You do not.”

“Be that as it may, unless you’re feeling steady enough to whisk us back to the castle, I suggest you get some rest until you’re either strong enough to do so or can heal yourself well enough to not bleed out on the journey home.”

Regina casts a withering glare at him, (to no apparent effect; he’s resting his head against the tree, his knees bent, bow clasped loose in his hands between his legs), and holds her hands a few inches above her stomach. A purple haze shimmers between her palms as she tries to knit her flesh together. An infection swirls in the wound, attempting to take root despite the medicinal spread he’d applied, and she’s stupid, stupid for not taking the time to heal herself right after the attack, should’ve known the animal’s claws were crawling with disease. What she wouldn’t give for a shot of penicillin. She scourges the bacteria from her system, sweat beading on her brow, dampening her neck, and when she’s done she sits up, testing the healed rips in her flesh. They hold.

“Okay,” she says, gripping her knees as her hands shake. “Let’s go.”

“Regina, we can stay here until you're—”

“I said let's go,” she says, standing, slow, careful, her hands held out palms down as the ground tilts and then rights. “I can’t take us all the way back, and we need to move if we’re going to be home by breakfast.”

“As her majesty commands,” the thief says, smothering the fire, a scowl etched into his face.

Regina unwinds the makeshift bandages, peeling the sticky fabric away and balling it up. The cloth is finely spun, soft, and she glances back at the thief, sees the tattered sleeves she’d overlooked earlier, the ragged edges fluttering around his biceps and the uneven hem, as he breaks down the camp.

“Robin,” she says.

He stands, shaking twigs and leaves from his cloak, eyebrows raised in question.

“I’ll replace your clothing when we return.”

She holds up the balled up remnants of his shirt at his curious frown, and his eyes spark with mischievousness.

“So long as they aren’t made of gold, milady, I am much obliged.”


	10. I Wish I Could Hate You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue Prompt: I wish I could hate you.
> 
> Operation Mongoose missing scene or au, however you like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darth Charming / Evil Snow
> 
> ****  
> Trigger Warning: Dubcon  
> ****

“Tell me what you think of me, my spurious consort,” Queen Snow says, slithering into the room he was told to wait for her arrival in after returning to the castle.

Charming’s leather gloves creak as his fingers flex. Grip his sheathed sword tighter.

She’s in one of her quiet, manic phases, red lips a garish slash stretching across her teeth as she approaches, slipping her gloves from her hands, tucking them in her belt.

“Do you despise me?” 

She snaps her fingers, divesting him of scabbard and cloak.

So, it’s to be this game. 

He relaxes his hands. Fills his lungs with breath.

“Do you hate me?”

Release.

 _Snap_.

Her fingernails trail a sinuous line across his bare shoulders as she circles him.

His abdomen twitches, once. Tightens.

She continues.

“Does it burn you up inside that no matter what you do…”

 _Snap_.

Boots.

“No matter what you say…”

 _Snap_.

Belt.

“No matter how many times you make me scream…”

 _Snap_.

Trousers.

“You will never be a tenth of the man your brother was?”

The flagstones burn the soles of his feet like a frostbite.

She likes to do this. Taunt him with James. Strip him bare as she deconstructs his ego. Or tries to. Some days she’s more successful than others.

He knows what she wants.

 _No, your majesty. Yes, your majesty_.

That’s all. Three simple words to appease the mania.

He’s disinclined to play today, though.

“I wish I could despise you,” he says, dialing his focus into the ornate gold candelabra behind the queen. Clasps his hands in front of his small clothes. His middle knuckle cracks.

Her voice drapes across his shoulders like a cloak of starlight. “What did you say?” Cold. Cutting. Yet, soft. Queen Snow. She who skims fire from her palms and drips frost from her lips

He squares his shoulders. “I wish I could hate you.”

“Do you?” She stalks toward him, elbow a jutting angle against her bejeweled curves.

“But I can’t,” he says.

She stands, every inch icy indignance while he blisters beneath her glower. “And why not? Because you will always find me?” Her head bobs as she scoffs, pivots on her heel.

His words shackle him to her as surely as her possession of his heart. “I will always find you,” he says, fastening his gaze to the back of her head. “The woman who saved a child from drowning in the river.”

“Stop.”

“The woman who sat at that child’s bedside for six nights while she had the grip.”

“Stop. Now.” Her head snaps to the side, neck muscles cording, jumping.

“The woman who killed her own father to protect that same child.”

“That woman is gone!” Snow screeches, slashing her arm through the air, her skirts a swirling storm of glittering darkness as she tears toward him.

Charming’s mouth dangles open, a fish with a hook jutting through its cheek. Her breath is warm, heavy on his skin. Calls the tiny army of hairs lining his body to attention.

“Because of her, my love is dead, and I’m stuck with you,” she says, her face lined like the creases of his palm. “A useless, worm of a man who can’t even bring himself to hate the one who enslaves him.”

She is fire, she is ice, and she is not wrong.

He bends. “Then you are my curse as I am yours.”

The whites of her eyes glow, her nostrils flare.

He closes his eyes.

 _Snap_.

Charming squints. The setting sun is eye level as he stands on a hill outside the palace walls, still bare save for his small clothes.

“Find the boy,” Snow’s voice commands, a thousand bells tolling betwixt his ears. “Find Regina.”

“No need to shout, your majesty,” he mutters. His clothes flutter from atop a nearby tree, his sword stabbed into the soil between the mighty roots breaching the ground. He grips the hilt with both hands. Pulls the blade free. And then climbs.


	11. Do You Believe?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reimagining the X-Files pilot episode with Agent Mills and Agent Locksley. Written for herardentwish Secret Santa 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen

Special Agent Robin Locksley raps a smart knock on the basement office door with the backs of his knuckles, and then pushes the door open.

“Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted,” a dry, feminine voice calls from the depths of the room.

Wonderful, Locksley thinks, stepping over the threshold. She sounds as delightful as her reputation.

It’s difficult not to see this reassignment from Quantico as a slap in the face. Debunking an entire department, even one as small and forgotten as this one, isn’t what he joined the FBI for, though his father would probably have a few choice words for him when he heard, the mildest of which would be I told you so.

He slows his pace, taking in his new environment. The first thing that hits him is the smell. Not the musky dampness of a basement, nor the pungent acridity of toner and paper from the copiers housed down the hallway, but apples. The whole office smells like a bloody orchard.

He snorts and wrinkles his nose, stepping further into the office. The walls are papered with news clippings, charts, scribbled notes on scraps of paper, and a large poster of a UFO bearing the words “I Want to Believe” in a bold, white capitalized font. His new base of operations as it were. Babysitting Spooky Regina Mills.

The woman in question turns, glancing up at him from behind a charming pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. Dark hair falls to just above her shoulders, straight and stark aside from a few tendrils around her face that have succumbed to the humidity of the basement and curled into small corkscrews. A black blazer hangs from the back of her chair, swinging gently as she returns to the slides laid out on the lightbox.

“Agent Mills,” Locksley says, stepping closer and holding out his hand. “I’m Agent Locksley.”

“The spy,” she replies, setting aside a slide and quirking an eyebrow as she stands. She’s shorter than him, even with the sizable heels she’s sporting, but dressed in a smart white blouse tucked into black trousers matching her jacket. A thin gold chain circles her neck and dips below the first button fastening her shirt.

“Well as we’re tossing sand in the sandbox, aren’t you technically known as Spooky Mills?”

Wrong thing to say, apparently. She scowls and drops his hand, picking up the half-full slide carousel and dropping it onto the projector. “I prefer Agent Mills.”

“As you wish.”

“Tell me, Dr. Locksley, what prompted you to join the FBI with such a stunning career in medicine ahead of you? Rewriting Einstein’s Twin Paradox in your dissertation is nothing to sneeze at,” Agent Mills says, flipping off the lights, and then slapping the side of the projector with the flat of her hand when it doesn’t respond to the clicker.

“Did you bother to read it?”

“I did. I love a bit of light reading before bed. Now, in your medical opinion, doctor, what kind of compound is this?”

Locksley scrubs the image of silk pajama-clad Agent Mills pouring over his dissertation with a glass of wine in bed from his mind, and focuses on the slide projected on the screen to his right. He scans the chemical formula, eyes flitting from element to element, sliding along chemical bonds, and he frowns. “It’s organic,” he offers, stepping closer. He holds two fingers out, tracing the formula in the air. “But I’m afraid I’m not familiar with it.”

“Don’t worry. Neither am I,” Mills says, leaning back against the filing cabinets lining the wall. “But it’s shown up in four separate cases spanning four different states, including the latest one in Oregon, all coinciding with these.”

She flips through a series of subjects, all laying face down on the ground with two raised bumps on their lower left flank. The last slide stops on a young woman, white nightgown rucked up and caked in dirt, red marks an inch or so above the elastic band of her periwinkle blue underthings.

“Injections? Insect bites? Dermatological reaction from something she’s brushed against while running through the woods?” he posits, folding his arms across his chest, meeting Mills’ gaze across the broad beam of the projector.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she says, shrugging. “Postmortems are all inconclusive.”

Locksley hums, chewing his lower lip as he considers the slide again. He glances back to Agent Mills, surprised to find her eyes focused on his mouth before sliding up to his eyes. She pushes herself off the filing cabinets with an effortless grace, breaking into the projector’s stream of light. The slide of the dead Oregon girl slips across the line of her cheekbone, humps over the bridge of her nose, feathers across her brow. Closer, closer, until dust and the subtle floral of her perfume overtake the apple-scented air fresheners she’s plugged into every available outlet.

“Do you believe the existence of extraterrestrials, Agent Locksley?” she whispers.

Oh, she’s good, Locksley thinks, smirking. But two can play at this. He slides forward, encroaching on her space, forcing her to look up at him. For a moment, neither says a word. Dust particles shimmer and flutter in the air between them. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips.

Locksley leans forward, smirk growing as he feels her breath hitch in anticipation. At the last second, his left hand darts out to click off the projector, and he steps back, out of her space. “No,” he says. “From a logical standpoint, I do not.”

Mills rolls her eyes. “Typical.” She steps back and flicks the overhead fluorescents back on, a slight twist turning up her red lips as she sees him squint in the sudden brightness.

“Given the vastness of space, the necessary fuel requirements—”

“Conventional wisdom,” Mills dismisses with a regal wave of her hand. “I’m not interested in convention, nor will you find it in great supply here in the X-Files, Agent Locksley.”

Well, then. He rocks back on his heels. “Bringing the conversation back round to the case at hand,” he says, attempting a diplomatic, but no-nonsense tone. “These people all died of something. The answers are all there, I assure you. You just have to know where to look.”

“But when science and medicine fail us, when logic can ascribe no reason for the evidence before us, might we not then consider the fantastic as a plausibility?” Mills steps forward again, pushing into his space this time, and he can’t help the cheeky smile that blooms on his face. She has such fire, such gusto, and it’s refined and yet still pulsing with raw energy that crackles in the air. So very different and refreshing from the inexperienced enthusiasm of the students he’s been teaching for the last two years at the academy.

He’s tempted to quote her Occam’s Razor. Because while he has no answer for the strange chemical compound found on the victims, nor their broad geographical distribution, the idea that aliens have nothing better to do than hide in the shadows and play secret squirrel with the human populace is preposterous.

“I think it’s plausible the coroner has made a mistake,” he says. “That the police have overlooked a seemingly nonessential detail, or sloppy fieldwork has contaminated the evidence. I see no reason to entertain the fantastic until we’ve evaluated the evidence from every rational angle.”

Agent Mills lifts her chin, eyes narrowed, and for a moment he can’t breathe. Then she smiles, steps back and opens the top drawer of the second filing cabinet. “Pack your rain slicker, Locksley. We leave at 6:00am for the very plausible state of Oregon.” She tosses a red striped folder stamped with the familiar CONFIDENTIAL warning across the front onto the sole desk in the office, and then sits back down at the lightbox.

He’s dismissed then. Alright. That’s fine by him. It’ll give him time to go home and pack, make arrangements for someone to come water his plants while he’s gone. Maybe toss back a whiskey or two to “celebrate” his new assignment. As he approaches the door, though, he turns back and asks, “Apples?”

“You’d prefer a bouquet of mildew and burned coffee instead?” she asks, sliding her glasses to the top of her head as she studies a slide.

“I’m buying some DampRid when we get back.”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever.”

Locksley shakes his head, and slips into the hallway, closing the door behind him. He punches the button on the elevator, taps his foot as he waits for the carriage to clunk its way down to the basement level. That had gone… as well as could be expected, he supposes. With any luck, debunking the X-Files won’t take long, and then perhaps he’ll be able to request another assignment. Something a little more cush and without the danger of inhaling toxic mold.

The elevator arrives with a forlorn ding. He steps in, tabs the button for the main floor, and leans against the far wall as it ascends, one ankle crossed over the other. Although, he muses, Agent Mills had been more than he’d been expecting. A tad off her rocker, perhaps, but sharp and intuitive. He can see why the VCU was upset to lose such a valuable asset to the obscurity of the X-Files. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s possibly the loveliest thing to cross his path since Marian left him.

Ding. The elevator stops at the main floor, and he exits into the sunlight streaming through the open atrium, a small smile on his face. It’s been a long time since a challenge like this has been laid before him.

Let the games begin.


	12. The Missing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen AU

For the first time in over a year, Regina wakes slowly, luxuriating in the warm, heavy weight of Robin’s arm across her middle, the slow, grasping passes of his fingers scrunching the soft cotton of her sleepshirt against her belly as a soft wedge of early dawn filters through the gap in the curtains. A sleepy smile stretches across her face as Robin’s nose bumps along the column of her neck, his lips following in a lazy, heated line that curls her toes and warms the center of her chest. She flips to her back, then the opposite side until she’s face to face with him, eyes still weighed down by the last dregs of sleep, and burrows into him until their limbs are completely entwined. 

“Sleep well, my love?” Robin asks, tracing idle arcs across her spine with his thumb. “I didn’t hear any night terrors last night.”

She stiffens, eyes flying open, adrenaline chasing away morning-soaked bliss. “No, no night terrors.” 

His hands still against her back, her side, as a wave of horror and guilt washes over both their faces. “I forgot,” Regina whispers, her voice hoarse and raw with distress. “I slept through the night. And then I woke up and I forgot.”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Robin says, tucking her head firmly under his chin. “I’m sorry.”

“I forgot our children were gone. It’s been a year and they’re still missing and I didn’t even dream of that pied-piping bastard last night and I forgot.”

Robin sucks in a hard breath through his nose, tilts his cheek against the crown of her head. “We’ll get them back, Regina. I promise.”


	13. Row, Row, Row Your Boat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regal Believer

“Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Regina switches to a gentle hum as she slicks on a coat of deep red lipstick, glancing over to the playpen set up in her bedroom as she caps the shiny black tube.

Henry continues pressing the buttons on his singalong nursery rhyme toy, the melodies jumbling as he runs his hand across all of them at once. “Sing, sing!”

Regina smiles and tucks her black camisole into her skirt, layering her silk shirt over it and adjusting the drape of the fabric from her shoulders as she starts the rhyme over again. The clock on the bathroom counter flicks to 5:43 am. They’re not running late, but neither are they quite as on time as they usually are for a Tuesday morning.

It’s her fault, really. She’s the one who brought a sleepy Henry from his crib to her bed for early morning snuggles after her alarm went off an hour ago. Sleepy snuggles slipped into actual sleeping again, for a few minutes, before he began patting her face with his chubby hand, singing a heavily abridged “Twinkle Twinkle a Little Star” to her.

He’s going to be two, soon. Children grow so fast, his development stark against the unchanging landscape of her cursed town. Will he be able to make friends when he’s old enough for school? Surely the curse would blanket his eyes from seeing the way he outgrows his playmates every year, wouldn’t it? He’s too young to tell, now, but he seems happy, he’s healthy, and gods, she would destroy realms again for him if it meant his safety.

Regina shakes her head at her reflection. No need to worry about things that may or may not happen. She brushes her hand over the light switch as she exits the bathroom, and stops short.

Henry stands in the playpen, hands clasped to the rail as the rest of his body crouches low, and he’s *giggling*.

She chuckles, familiar with this game. “Where’s Henry?”

More giggles, and an impatient bounce that sends a series of squeaks through the playpen.

“Where’s my little prince?” Regina sing songs, walking toward him.

Henry pops up and throws his hands into the air, squealing, “Mama!” as he falls over backward.

“There he is!” Regina bends over and pulls him from the playpen, hugging him close and planting a kiss on his cheek. She leaves a lipstick stain on his skin and licks her thumb to smudge it away as he tries to bury his head in the crook of her neck. “Are you ready for breakfast, my little prince?”

Granny’s will be open by the time she gets the both of them loaded in the car. Pancakes are half off on the second Tuesday of the month, and she indulges enough that she’s become a regular when the diner opens its doors. For pancakes.

“Let’s get you dressed and ready for preschool,” she murmurs, patting him on the back as he snuggles into her, fist opening and closing on the lapel of her collar.

She wouldn’t trade this for anything.


	14. Things You Said That I Wasn't Meant to Hear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry says a bad word and Roland turns out to be quite the little businessman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen + Dimples Believer

“Oh fuck.”

Roland looks up from his Captain Underpants book, but Henry’s hands wrap around his face, covering his eyes and his mouth as he walks toward the kitchen. He’s determined to get this walking while reading thing down by summer break, though if his big brother is gonna keep messing with him it’s gonna take longer. Roland swipes his tongue across Henry’s hand, grunting a muffled protest. Henry refuses to let go, pulling him backward toward the front door and shushing him.

“You said a bad word,” Roland sing-songs when Henry releases him.

“Yep, but you’re not gonna tell my mom or your dad because we are going to go out for ice cream.”

Roland rolls his eyes, marking his place in his book with his finger. “Like Regina would let us go out this late.”

“Trust me, she’ll say yes.”

Henry’s ears burn bright red, a flush creeping up his neck to match, and Roland’s scoff turns into a groan.

“Again?”

Henry nods.

“Kissing?”

Henry nods again.

“Worse than kissing?”

A strangled gurgling rises from the back of Henry’s throat.

“I want rocky road, then.”

“Deal,” Henry says. “Go get our jackets.”

Roland tosses his book to the console table by the front door as Henry stands to the side of the kitchen door, hollering that they’re going to get ice cream and will be back in an hour. There’s a minor scuffling, someone bangs an elbow or a knee against a kitchen cabinet as the two boys slip on their coats, and then their parents tumble out of the kitchen, presentable if a bit flushed and breathless.

“It’s a little late for ice cream, isn’t it?” Regina says, jumping slightly as Robin’s hands slide around her waist and tug her until she’s leaning against him.

“It’s Friday,” Henry points out. “And you’ve barely been home this week, so we’re gonna… leave.”

Roland nods and grabs the car keys from the hook inside the closet door, keeping quiet. Henry is much better at talking people into things. He himself is better at sneaking. Between the two of them, it works out.

“Bring me some cherry vanilla, will you?” Robin asks, resting his chin on Regina’s shoulder, winking at them.

“Yep.”

Regina frowns, but Robin whispers something in her ear that curls a smile across her lips, and she relents. “Drive safe. And bring me some frozen yogurt if they have any?”

“You got it, Mom.”

The boys scurry outside, and Henry backs the car out of the driveway, not even grazing the hedge on the passenger side like he usually does.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Roland says.

Henry chuckles and gives him a high five. “Just remember, you never heard me say the f-word.”

“About that. I’m gonna need two scoops to forget something that bad.”

“Extortion.”

“Business.”

“Mom’s gonna kill me.”

“But not for swearing.”

“Two scoops it is.”


	15. Things You Said When I Told You I was Pregnant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel like the title is self-explanatory. Set after season five (Dark Swan never happened).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captain Swan + Swan Queen brotp

Emma stands at the island, peeling apples in Regina’s kitchen on the fourth Friday afternoon in April, and tries to keep her gaze notched at a steady Subtle Observation rather than Outright Stare. To her left, Regina puffs her cheeks and scrunches her nose at the baby girl kicking socked feet in the bouncy chair, smiling at the shrieking giggles spilling forth.

That’s gonna be me a year from now, sitting there, having spit bubbles blown in my face.

Emma breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth, trying to settle herself as her chest tightens again, and glances at the microwave clock. Henry will be home from school any minute. Her window of time is closing. She just needs to keep reminding herself that she deals with far more ridiculous things on a regular basis. This question she’s been psyching herself up to ask Regina for the last half hour is nothing compared to dispatching a chernabog from the roof of her bug.

Be cool, be calm, be casual.

“Regina, have you ever had an issue with medicine…” Emma trails off, searching for the right word. Crap, she should have rehearsed this more. “Interacting weird with your magic? Like the science-y part and the magic-y part not getting along?”

Good. That was good. That sounded normal, right?

Regina wipes spit off the baby’s chin with a burp cloth and tosses the damp rag over her shoulder, brows raised as she crosses the kitchen and retrieves a red teething ring from the fridge.

“In what way?”

Emma wedges her paring knife under the mottled red and yellow skin of the Honeycrisp with deliberate, slow flicks of her wrist. “Like antibiotics, zinc supplements, birth control. You know. Stuff.”

Smooth, Swan. She cringes inside as Regina quirks the corner of her mouth into a saddish, knowing smile.

Subtlety never was either of their strong suits.

But Regina starts rattling off a story of when she had to modify the dosage of a treatment for a nasty flu-like infection that sank its teeth into her back in the Enchanted Forest, and somewhere amidst the magical theoretics and the horrifying symptoms, Emma starts watching the baby tug her fuzzy pink sock off her tiny little foot instead of listening.

This could be a second chance. She could make actual memories of holding her son (or daughter) as an infant, not the spurious flood of recollections implanted by a curse. First step, first haircut, first tricycle, first day of school, scraped knee, nightmare during thunderstorm moments; they’re all hers for the taking now.

Emma’s neck flushes, the world gone hot and dizzying for a moment as her thoughts derail. Everything is happening at once, why is everything happening right now, why is she here at Regina’s when she should have told Killian by now (three weeks, three weeks of passing it off as the flu, who is she fucking kidding), and he knows something’s wrong, he’s not stupid, why—

“Emma.”

Regina’s hand is warm on her wrist, and then it’s gone. It’s something she’s always appreciated about her son’s other mother; she never grabs for attention, rarely touches aside from a moment here or there until she’s sure you’re listening and then she retreats.

Except for Henry. Always the exception for Henry, for Roland, for the baby. Henry is Emma’s exception, too.

“If you or Hook are concerned, I can show you some herbal alternatives.”

“No, that’s okay.”

They peel apples until Henry barrels through the front door, Roland chasing after him as they pound up the stairs, Regina’s, No running in the house!, lost under a swarm of giggles and theatrical roars.

“You’re sure you’re only here for Henry and not all three of them?” Regina tickles the baby’s tummy, resting most of her weight on the counter.

Jesus, she looks tired, and as Emma sets aside the last apple she realizes she’s done most of the work and Regina’s just been sitting this whole time, about five minutes away from falling asleep on her feet.

“Sadly I draw the line at one kid.”

Two.

She can’t say one.

Two. Her chest tightens again.

Fuck.

At least Regina can keep a secret, which is amazing, because she pulls Emma aside as Henry clomps out the door with his backpack and a duffel bag of clean clothes, a hasty promise that he will do his homework this weekend flying from his lips as Regina presses a ziploc baggie stuffed with green packets into her hand. For a second she thinks this is the herbal concoction Regina mentioned earlier until she reads the typeface printed in an elegant arc above the graphic of a mint leaf.

“Peppermint tea helped your mother,” Regina says, and, blessedly, nothing else as Emma swallows hard on the front porch and Henry calls to her from the bug, eager to get underway.

/~/

Killian skims his fingers along the length of her backbone, his callouses a pleasant roughness against her skin, back and forth, back and forth. If she were inclined to purr, she would, the heady lull he’s spun her into loosening her tongue along with her limbs.

“I’m pregnant,” she whispers to the sparse black hairs dotting his chest, her hand cupping the side of his ribs. His breath hitches, catching in her palm as his fingers stumble over the notches in her spine while the thump THUMP of two heartbeats (three) stretches in the purplish gray of infinity.

When the pirate breathes again, it’s with a relieved, Finally, at once irritating and endearing, and she pinches his side. He yelps and chuckles into her sleep-tousled hair, pressing a scratchy kiss to her forehead. “I was wondering if you were going to wait until the lass or lad’s first birthday to tell me.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh, come on, it’s a little funny.”

“I don’t think so.” Emma sits up and pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. 

Killian sobers, tapping the touch lamp on the nightstand with his wrist and scooting back against the headboard next to her. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to belittle your feelings.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Emma pulls her knees to her chest under the blankets, allowing them to lean against Killian’s legs as she turns into his embrace, arms folded and tucked across her chest. “I should have told you weeks ago.”

“You’ve told me now. That’s all that matters.”

It’s really not all that matters, not at all, but it’s nice of him to say anyway as he curls his arm around her and rests his cheek on the top of her head, wrapping her in warmth, braving her icy toes tucked beneath his thigh without comment.

“I don’t know if I can do this again.”

The admission slithers off her tongue before she can stuff it back in the cage of her mind.

“Aye.” It’s more of a sigh ruffling the remnants of her nighttime plait than a word of agreement, but it resonates with the flickering, exhausted chaos inside her and sums the total of her being as she presses her lips into a thin, tight line. “I know this isn’t what you would have chosen.”

Emma nods against Killian’s shoulder, sniffling. “Regina knows.”

He stiffens before she has a chance to explain.

“I had to ask her about my magic. I mean, we took precautions so this wouldn’t happen, and it did, so I wondered, and she guessed. Like you.” Her hand shifts to his chest, and he relaxes. “How did you guess, by the way?”

“I’m a connoisseur of beautiful things, love. You’ve gone soft and full and lovely here and here,” he says, dancing his fingers in idle patterns below her collarbone, then sweeping down her side to curve of her hip.

“I thought the morning sickness would’ve given me away.”

“Dead giveaway.” He nods and smirks, and she huffs as she snuggles further into his side. “However, it’s not a very romantic thing to say to your girlfriend at two o’clock in the morning after a heartfelt confession.”

Emma hums and closes her eyes. Two in the morning. That’s why her eyelids feel weighted with anchors. Well, that and the stowaway. She’d forgotten how exhausting creating new life was.

“Come on. It’s late. Let’s get some sleep, and we can talk after first light, before your boy wakes.” Killian rubs her shoulder, and she frowns because there’s more, so much more they need to talk about, that she needs to get out in the open, but he’s right.

“Okay.”

They slide down in the bed until their heads are nestled in the pillows once again, his hand trailing soft along the length of her back as other arm rests warm against her hip, near the softness he spoke of with such reverence.

“I love you, Emma Swan.”

She pulls him that much closer and whispers, I love you more, and the tightness in her chest releases.


	16. Things You Said that I Wasn't Meant to Hear #2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regina watches Emma make breakfast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Swan Queen

They were supposed to sleep in today, the both of them, so when she wakes and finds Emma long gone, enough that the middle of the bed is cool below her palm (because let’s not kid anyone, the savior is a big fat bed hog), Regina is, in her opinion, justifiably miffed. She’d had plans for Emma this morning, involving both of them being naked and cozy and tangled up in each other below the duvet as the sun crept across the sky. 

She shrugs her robe across her shoulders, not bothering to tie the belt as she scoots bare feet across the carpet, heading for the bedroom door. The warm, sizzling crackle of frying bacon fills the house with a delicious, sinful smell. Emma has the radio tuned to one of the 80s, 90s, and now stations, her mezzo-soprano floating over the music and the kitchen clankings of breakfast-making. 

Regina sighs as she walks toward the kitchen. So much for surprising Emma with breakfast in bed. She’ll have to come up with something else to spoil her today. As she enters the kitchen, she stops and leans against the floor to ceiling cabinets, watching her lover bounce about the room. 

She’s fresh-faced and pink from the shower with her damp hair swirled into a bun atop her head, clad in only a pair of black boy shorts and fitted gray tank top. Emma tips a plastic bowl filled with pancake batter into a funnel, a soft Ack! escaping her as her phone chitters on the counter, a stream of batter sloshing over the side when she scrambles to answer the call. She swipes her finger along the edge of the bowl and then wipes her hand on a dishtowel before picking up the phone.

“Hey kid, what’s up? Having fun at Mom and Dad’s?” 

Emma tucks the phone between her jaw and her shoulder, screwing on the tip of the batter-filled bottle and shaking it a few times to make sure the lid is secure. A tab of butter lands on an empty skillet with another sizzle. She’s quiet for a while, listening to Henry singing her Happy Birthday, Regina presumes, poking at the bacon and snatching her hand away from the vicious grease popping and cracking. 

“Thank you. No, she’s still asleep. I am making pancakes. Yes, the fun squiggly kind.” 

Emma twirls a pair of tongs around her fingers once before flipping the crispy strips of meat, and damn if Regina’s stomach doesn’t grumble aloud as the blonde begins drawing looping shapes on the pancake skillet with the squeeze bottle. 

“But I _like_ making breakfast. Regina always wakes up before I do and practically has a four-course meal ready for us before I’ve even hit the shower.”

 _Since when does she enjoy cooking?_ Regina wonders, and Henry must have asked the same thing because Emma lets out an indignant squawk, saying, “Since she sent us to that apartment in New York and I had twenty-eight years of Regina’s cooking knowledge jammed into my brain.”

Oh. That would do it. Regina crosses her arms across her stomach. At least she knows Henry ate well during their separation.

“Besides, today is a special day. No, not just because it’s my birthday.” 

Emma flips the pancake, twists the knob on the stove until the blue flame below the bacon flickers out. She leans against the counter with one hip, eyes trained on the cooking food. 

“Today’s the day you found me in Boston.”

Regina’s breath catches in her throat. 

“And you know, your mom and I didn’t really hit it off well in the beginning, but we came around, and now I have you and I have her and my parents and so many other wonderful things in my life now. Today isn’t just my birthday. It’s the anniversary of finding my family.”

Emma shifts the finished pancake off the skillet and starts another one, drooping more lazy lines of batter across the hot surface. She glances up as she snags a piece of bacon, crunching the end between her teeth delicately, and her eyes meet Regina’s, widening for a moment and then softening as she sees her wiping away a stray tear. 

“Hey, kid, I gotta go. Your mom’s awake. No, we are not going to do gross things all over the house.”

Emma nods at Regina and mouths: _Oh yes, we are_.

Regina laughs, grinning as she walks further into the kitchen to inspect her handiwork. Emma offers her a strip of bacon, but she declines, leaning over to see what she’s done with the pancakes. The first hotcake has their initials burned into the surface in wobbling script, and as she flips the second, she sees “4 eva” seared into its face. She shakes her head, ducking over to the refrigerator to snag the fresh strawberries she’d picked up yesterday, and starts rinsing and slicing them as Emma finishes up her goodbyes to their son.

“You’re up early,” Regina says, setting the bowl of berries next to the stove while Emma drizzles the last of the batter into the pan. 

“I know, I know. We were supposed to laze around in bed all morning, but I was wide awake at seven and you’re just so damn adorable when you sleep that I couldn’t bear to wake you.”

“I am not.”

“You are so,” Emma says, leaning over to peck her on the cheek, the wild edge of a grin dancing on her lips. 

Regina shakes her head, sliding her arms around Emma’s waist, laying her cheek against her back. She smiles as Emma starts singing along with the radio again, the gentle thrumming of her heart and her song tickling her face as she presses a soft line of kisses from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. “Happy birthday, Emma,” she whispers.


	17. Things You Said When You Thought I was Asleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missing Year. Of course, no one thought to coordinate who would be providing breakfast for the refugees within the castle walls that first morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dimples Queen

Of course, no one thought to coordinate who would be providing breakfast for the refugees within the castle walls that first morning. 

Not knowing how long her sister was in residence, she’s relieved to find a number of their stored grains in the cellar just before dawn, unspoiled and untouched by the green-skinned witch. She slices into a sack of oats, scooping out a generous portion, and retreats to the pantry in search of cinnamon, the apples she’d plucked from her realm-jumping tree weighing heavy in her pocket. 

Voices in the kitchen drive her into a small cupboard, door cracked as two sets of feet descend the three steps into the pantry. 

The thief’s boy bounds into the room, clutching the plush she’d transfigured for him on the road to his chest with both arms, followed by his sleep-rumpled, yawning father. 

“But why would she be asleep when the sun is already waking up?”

“Roland, the sun has barely woken.”

Regina keeps to her hiding place, pressing the bowl of oats to her belly. She has no desire to be found skulking about her own kitchens by anyone, least of all the thief and his son.

The boy plops his stuffed toy on a table, sneezing as a layer dust puffs into his face. “Me and Squawk are hungry, so wouldn’t she be hungry, too?”

“Squawk and I,” the thief corrects, ruffling his son’s curls and sitting him atop the table. 

Plus one point for good grammar, minus three points for bottoms on tables instead of in chairs, she thinks, and then subtracts fifty from herself for the warm glow burrowing in her chest to see the boy enjoying his gift enough to name it something as ridiculous as “Squawk”. 

Another tousled, chestnut-haired boy ghosts across her vision, tottering toward the table on sleepy feet, dragging a floppy teddy bear by the leg. He plops down next to Roland, burying his head in the bear’s stomach as he yawns. Regina blinks once, then twice again to clear the moisture from her eyes, and the boy is gone, leaving only the thief’s son kicking his feet in the air.

“She might be hungry when she wakes, but the queen may choose to sleep well into the day.”

Roland sketches doodles into the dust on the table as his father pokes through what little food remains. “How come?” 

“Do you remember how tired you were when we arrived last night?”

“I fell asleep on Uncle John’s shoulder.”

“Well I’d wager the queen was even more tired than you because before we stumbled into each other in the woods, she traveled here from a whole other realm.”

“The place with no magic?”

“Indeed. And not only that, but she went face to face with the Wicked Witch, too, while we were making sure the castle was safe for you to come stay.”

“Oh,” Roland says, mollified. “But maybe later today me and—I mean, Squawk and I can say thank for saving us?”

“We’ll see what the day brings, m’boy. Which may not be breakfast,” the thief says, frowning at the offerings displayed. 

Honestly, does she have to do everything? Regina waves her hand, and the sack of oats she’d cut open lands with a thud at the opposite end of the table, spilling some of its contents, along with half the apples she’d picked for herself and a small mound of cinnamon. 

Roland yelps, snatching Squawk to his belly, and a hot vein of remorse threads through her chest at his fear. She pushes open the door until it begins to catch and creak, making eye contact with the thief as he approaches the spoils with his dagger drawn. He opens his mouth to say something, but whether greeting or chastisement, she’ll never know. She holds her hand up to stay his comment, shaking her head, not wanting Roland to know she’s there, and he closes his mouth, nodding once in thanks before she vanishes in a subdued swirl of purple smoke.


	18. Things You Said That I Wasn't Meant to Hear #3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Season Five (AU). Regina searches for Henry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regal Believer

It’s not that he’s run away.

It’s just that he’s not at the library, where he said he was going when he stomped out of the house, nor is he at Granny’s, the sheriff’s station, or anywhere else in Storybrooke.

Which leaves only one place.

 _And he had better be there_ , Regina thinks, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as she picks her way through the forest. Dusk’s last blush hangs heavy and low on the horizon, cloaking serpentine tree roots and sudden elevation dips in a haze of bruised purple. She should have brought a flashlight. Hell, she should have brought her car, but she’s too close to go back for either one now.

Through the trees, a soft white light dangles from the railing of the playground’s upper platform. One of her crank-operated LED storm lights, if she’s not mistaken. Two figures sit on either side, chatting quietly as evening fades to night, and as Regina draws closer, she’s able to pick out both Henry and Grace’s features.

Thank goodness. 

She fishes for her cell phone in her pocket, intending to call Emma and let her know she’s found him, there’s no need to organize a manhunt, when Grace’s sweet voice filters through the buzzing hum of the forest settling into its nocturnal routine.

“Maybe your mom’s just trying to give you space? You know, since you told her you had a lot of homework this weekend?”

Regina shoots Emma a quick text instead of calling, and then creeps closer, keeping well outside the light’s halo behind a tree.

Henry taps the side of his shoe against one of the metal support poles, a dull, ringing thud keeping imperfect time with the forest’s concerto. “Maybe. I dunno. I just… I’ve always wanted a bigger family, and now that I have that it’s great, but I’m not quite sure where I fit in sometimes, you know?”

Regina’s fingers dig into tree bark. The annoyance and anxiety twisting in her belly pops and fizzles with shame, disappointment. To say things have been hectic in their household would be an understatement of graphic proportions. She’s stretched in more directions now than ever before, but to hear her son say he feels like he doesn’t fit into his own family guts her. 

“Hmm. You’re not the only one with a complicated family,” Grace says, her legs swinging slow and easy in the open air, movement as if for the simple pleasure of feeling a knee bend, the rush of blood pooling in a foot. “I’m pretty sure it’s a requirement to live here.”

“Something.”

The teens fall silent, contemplative, but then Grace rolls her eyes and bumps her shoulder into Henry’s. “Okay, stop moping and tell me what happened between you and that girl from Camelot.”

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Henry insists.

“Oo, so there was kissing!”

 _I should not be here for this_. And yet she remains rooted next to the tree, fingers digging even harder into the bark as she listens. This girlfriend-who-wasn’t hasn’t been mentioned since her departure, and while, yes, things have been busy, she’d thought they weren’t too busy to share things like this anymore.

“I never said that.”

“You implied.”

Henry sighs. “I never got the chance. There was so much going on with my moms and Zelena and Killian and the Underworld and… She kissed me on the cheek when I got back her horse, and I might have kissed her on her cheek before Mom sent them back. But that’s it.”

“That’s something,” Grace says, and Henry presses his lips together and bobs his head once, that familiar jerk of embarrassment Regina’s come to recognize in her son more and more these days.

Before anything else potentially mortifying can be let into the open, Regina steps into the light, squinting as she looks up at the teens’ perch with one hand shielding her eyes. “Henry, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Mom! How long have you been here?” He tilts the light away from her, sends it skyward instead. 

“Not long,” she demurs, lowering her hand. “But it’s time to come home now.”

_Please, come home. I don’t know how dinner will turn out because I left Robin alone with a baby fighting an ear infection and a six-year-old with proclivity for diving head-first off the furniture while the macaroni and cheese was in the oven, but come home and help me dry the dishes after dinner and we’ll talk like we used to, it’s not too late for that, it can’t be, please._

He stares at her, sizing her up, seeing through her lie about how long she’s been eavesdropping for sure, but he nods, says, _Okay_ , and knot in her gut unwinds a quarter turn inside.

“I should get going, too,” Grace says, standing and climbing down the ladder behind Henry. “I told my dad I’d only be gone an hour, and it’s definitely been longer.”

Henry shoots Regina a meaningful glance as Grace slides down the slide. “We’ll walk you home.”

Regina nods, smiling, if a tad awkwardly, at the young girl standing next to her. “Of course.”

On the platform, Henry gives the LED light several good cranks, then clips it to his belt as he slides under the railing and shimmies down the support pole, and God help her she stretches out a hand to cushion the fall he never takes. He lands on both feet, crouching with the impact, as though it’s a motion he’s gone through several times before. Regina closes her eyes for a moment, breathes, and then opens them to find him grinning.

“Don’t do that,” she chastises lightly, pulling him close and kissing his temple. “At least not around me, please.”

“Deal.” Henry ducks out of her embrace, and she lets him, falling into step beside the two teens as they make their way out of the forest and back to town.


	19. Things You Said When You were Scared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post "The Price"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen

Her fingers tremble against her belly as she stands before the wardrobe, tracing the muted pink beading pebbling her bodice in the guttering candlelight. Regina twists in place, casting a concerned glance over her shoulder toward the large bed draped in shadows.

Her eyes haven’t adjusted to the dim light yet, but Robin’s breathing is strong and steady as he sleeps. 

She expels a shaky breath, and turns back to the wardrobe, resting her forehead against the cool, dark wood, listening to his soft exhales. _Always the Evil Queen, even when I’m not_. Her fingers clench, nails scraping across delicate crystals as she stands up straight, sliding her hands from belly to back and fumbling for the laces cinching her dress.

Warm hands fall to her upper arms, stroking light paths elbow to shoulder. She jumps, swallowing a cry as she half turns into a broad chest.

“Sorry,” Robin murmurs, releasing her. “I’m sorry, love. I thought you heard me get up.”

“No, it’s okay.“ Regina relaxes against him for a moment before straightening and attacking the knot at the small of her back again. "I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I meant to wait up for you.” He drags his knuckles down her back, stilling her hands. “May I?”

She presses her lips together and nods, wiping her sweaty palms down the front of her dress. Robin helps her step out of the pink monstrosity and then drapes it over the back of a chair while she slips a filmy white nightgown over her head. 

“You still have facepaint here,” he says, tracing her cheekbone with his thumb. She tilts her head further into the cup of his palm until he shifts his hand lower, trailing two fingers over her mouth, catching slightly on her lower lip. “And here.” Both of his hands lift to her face, keep her steady as he grazes her eyelids with the softest of kisses. “And there as well.”

Tears slip from below her lashes as she leans back, sniffling at his crooked grin and disheveled hair sticking straight up on the side of his head like a little boy’s. “Don’t ever do that again,” she whispers. “I am not worth your life.” She passes her hand in front of her face, magicks away the makeup and the sloppy updo at the back of her head until her hair pools at her shoulders. 

Robin frowns, grips her elbows and pulls her close, and she allows the tender caress of his thumb across the soft underside of her arm though it distracts her from her tenuous anger, the fluttering edge of deep-seated fear still churning in her gut that doesn’t quite believe him when he says, “You are worth everything.”

“I will never not be the Evil Queen. I will never have a shortage of enemies. Emma already sacrificed herself, now you, and even Henry tried to—” She hiccups, tries to catch her breath as Robin wipes the tears from her cheeks.

“I’m fine. Clean bill of health, courtesy of Emma.” He guides one of her hands to his side. “Nary a scar to be found.”

Regina walks gentle fingers across his stomach, probing where she saw the blade enter. “I watched you die, Robin. How would I have explained your death to Roland?" 

Her prodding grows more insistent. There was blood. So much blood. A gaping wound meant for her own flesh that none of her magic could fill. 

Robin’s fingers circle her wrist, draw her restless hands to his chest. "There’s no one I trust more with my boy.” He dusts her knuckles with feathered kisses. “I’m alive and well, love, and so are you. Come to bed.”

Limbs tangle, hidden beneath rich, embroidered blankets, knees and elbows tucked into hollows and bends as they shift around each other, into each other, until they find peace enough to drift into sleep’s welcome embrace.


	20. Things You Said with Too Many Miles Between Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Season 4a. Robin calls Regina from New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen

_Hello, um, Regina, I forgot you don’t answer unknown numbers. Especially in the middle of the night. Should have remembered that. So I suppose I’ll just leave you a message then, yeah?_

_Anyway, you’re probably sleeping. I’m told people like to sleep at quarter of three in the morning._

_So, yeah._

_Roland asked after you and Henry again today. He’s discovered the comics that come folded in the daily paper and has decided to illustrate his own strip so that you’ll see it when you drink your coffee in the morning. I hadn’t the heart to tell him Maine doesn’t receive the same papers as New York. At least I don’t think you do._

_You wouldn’t believe how tall the buildings are here. I’m sitting on something called a, um, “fire escape”, a sort of external ladder and stair system rigged to the exterior wall. Should the building catch fire, rendering the internal corridors impassible, we’ll be able to climb down to safety. I hope we never have need of it other than as a place to sit and think._

_Listen, I, uh, I know you wanted to not speak for a while, to rip the band-aid off, so to speak, which I have now experienced, by the way, and you’re right, it bloody hurts, and I don’t know if it’s been enough time now, or if there ever will be time that’s enough, but something, uh… something’s happened and—_

—Beep!

“If you would like to edit your message, press pound. If you would like to delete your message and start over, press zero. Otherwise, you may hang up or press star for more options.”

Robin lowers the phone, thumb hovering over the digital keypad. He glances over his shoulder, through the window into the darkened bedroom he shares with Marian. The bed is empty, but a crack of light escapes below the small bathroom’s door. She must be sick again.

The phone prompts him once more, and he blows out a rush of air, thumping his head back against the brick. He shouldn’t have called; hearing her voice on the recording ( _Regina Mills_ , spoken in her no-nonsense, ironclad elocution), it drizzled a soothing, honeyed balm over his soul while branding his heart, as her affectations were always (are) wont to do.

Behind him, the window creaks and groans. Marian pokes her head through the opening, puzzled, sleepy, drawn. “What are you doing out here?”

“Nothing.” 

He thumbs the zero key and then disconnects.


	21. Things You Said When You were Crying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missing Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outlaw Queen

He’s no stranger to darkness, both the absence of light and the oily blackness that creeps (invited) into mankind’s heart. Dexterous fingers honed on picking rich men’s locks tug at fine, corseted laces, tumble waves of dark hair, and the careful study of angled silhouettes in the light supply preordained paths for eager lips to travel in the privacy of night. 

Whatever this is between them, the darkness consumes them together, swallows their rounded sighs and sharp cries, spells them away from the clarity of dawn.

Two become one, and then become (reluctant) two once more, and though parting is such sweet sorrow, as she’d told him once, he knows the tears now drifting down her cheeks spring not from anything as bright as release or joy. Her trembling lip taps the recesses of his own grieving heart, a double thump of empathy coalescing behind his breastbone. Silent tears shift to soft weeping, her delicate hand sliding to cover her mouth, but where he next thought to find the stinging lash of her tongue, he finds only weary acceptance at his witness of her vulnerability. 

He slides from the cradle of her hips, curls their bodies together until her body nests in his, an arm slung heavy across her middle while the other clutches her shoulders to his chest. She turns her face, muffling her sobs in the warmth of the sheets, but he feels the weight of her anguish like gravity’s inexorable pull. 

Not even the finest poets could fill an empty heart fractured with loss. He speaks in subdued caresses, punctuates with secreted kisses, tucking them behind the strong line of her jaw as he listens to her reply hidden in the firm grip on his forearm. Her body contracts with sorrow, attempts to expel the grief and guilt clotting her lungs, the agony of loss never to be recovered.

She’s no stranger to the darkness, either, but for tonight at least she won’t walk through it alone.


End file.
